Mich wrote:

"Tony Williams" wrote in message
...

In article ,
Frank Watson wrote:


I'd think twice about a house with a solid evergreen
hedge..... the amount of labour, does it need ladders
to cut, and (most important) how much sunlight does
it block off the garden in winter.


Interesting comment. I share the view. When I lived in town I had a next
door neighbour who used a leylandii hedge as a bully tactic!
I lost a lot of light in my house and I learned the lesson.
When buying my next house I looked closely at the hedges , especially the
leyland before I bought.

Also re point about maintainance. I have such a hedge bounding my current
property. Its a b*gger . I need large ladders to get up to it from my land.
Ive just spent two weeks with two others helping to cut it down.

I now have a major bonfire heap! Its not just cutting. Its disposal of the
waste.

A couple of years ago my neighbour on the other side of this hedge ( I dont
have near neighbours btw) put his house up for sale. It didnt sell. Its been
on the market for the whole of two years.

A few weeks ago he approached me asking if he could have the leyland cut
down to about three feet because he had no light in his house!
Now I didnt know this because as I said, he isnt a "near" neighbour and Ive
never been on his property!
Anyway, I helped him cut it down and realised how close he was built to
that boundary.

Two weeks later he sold his house.
So it could indeed have an effect.

By the way, so severe is the cut back on this hedge, I suspect I am going to
have to replace it with something ..... I think its not going to survive the
cut.
Thats another problem with leylandii. It grows out and up and dies back in
the centre. It will not recover from the old wood ( unlike private for
example) so its not possible to keep it cut and to one height permanently.
It will always creep up and eventually be out of control.



Not quite true, it will indeed die completely if cut back too
aggressively, BUT if you wait till it is - say - 50% taller than you
want, then cut back to half that - i.e. 75% of intended height, it will
sprout from the top enough to form a decent hedge, BUT it needs cutting
at least twice a year, and the odd one will sometimes just die.

Hazel is as bad by the way - huge sprouts needing a lot of trimming
every few months.

If you want to get a natural hedge going, my advice is to plant a double
row - what you want to end up with on the outside, and leylanndii inside
for rapid 'privacy' and after 5 years rip out the leylandii, and you
should have - if enough light got in - a decent hedge of something else.

I like Yew and Holly as evergreen hedging. In the climate of the last
few years these have both been surprisingly fast growers - up to a foot
a year. Both form dense screens and both can be cut pretty agressively
and will recover if you don't cut for a year or two.

But there are loads of other options - Rosa rugoasa is untidy, but
effective and gets covered in roses all summer. Escallonia looks nice,
but grows sow and is tender. Osmanthus burkwoodii is a lovely shrub with
dark green privet like leaves, and gets covered in the best smelling
flowers in spring, but is a very slow grower. Prinus laureocalis is like
a giant privet - big leaves, trims well. Not a fast grower tho.

And of course the old favorites of beech and hornbeam (better on wet
clay soils) that keep the brown leaves on over the winter.

I've even seen some of the evergreen Euonymous used as hedging, and
things like cotoneaster, berberis and pyracantha. The latter is a bit
watsed since the berries which are the star attraction, only grow on
second year growth, which regular trimming removes.

Even decidous stuff like lilacs can in time make a decent hedge.

If you want an instant priovacy screen, put up a fence :-)

If you want a natural hedge, plant one behind it :-)