Best Way to Liven Up the Garden Hedges

Hedges are essential features in gardens. As well as being decorative, they create privacy, reduce the strength of wind and mark boundaries. They are also useful in separating different parts of the garden.

Easy-to-manage, fast-growing hedges are numerous and include fragrant and diminutive plants, such as lavender, as well as more vigorous and exceptionally large conifers. When planning which hedge to use, consider carefully what is appropriate. If you have close neighbours, an exceptionally fast-growing hybrid conifer such as x Cupressocyparis leylandii could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Flowering hedges

These have an informal and colorful nature and create a more restful ambience than neatly trimmed foliage hedges. Some of these flowering types are low and small enough to be used internally in a garden, or even on either side of a path. Their pruning is slightly more involved than just neatly clipping foliage types, but nothing to create a problem. Here are a few flowering hedges to consider, with indications of the level of pruning required.

Forsythia x intermedia ‘Spectabilis’ (golden bells): Deciduous shrub with bright yellow flowers during spring.

• Height: 1.8-2.lm
• Width: 60-75cm
• Space plants: 38-45cm

l   Pruning: Clip established plants lightly, as soon as the flowers fade and the hedge loses its allure.

Fuchsia ‘Riccartonii’ (hardy fuchsia): Deciduous shrub, best suited for mild and coastal areas, with beautiful red-and-purple flowers that flourish from mid-summer to autumn.

• Height: 1-1.2m
• Width: 60-90cm
• Space plants: 30-38cm
• Pruning: In spring, cut all stems to ground level.

Lavandula angustifolia (lavender): Hardy, evergreen shrub with pale, grey-blue flowers from mid- to late summer, and often into autumn.

• Height: 75~90cm
• Width: 45-6ocm
• Space plants: 38-45cm
• Pruning: Clip off dead flowers heads after flowering.

Potentilla fruticosa (shrubby cinquefoil): Hardy, deciduous shrub with buttercup-yellow flowers from late spring to late summer.

• Height: 1.2-1.5m
• Width: 60cm
• Space plants: 25-30cm
• Pruning: Clip off dead and dying flowers when they fade.

Roses as hedges

For devotees of roses in small gardens, planting a rose hedge is a further way to enhance the garden’s beauty. There are many suitable roses.

‘Ballerina’: Single, blossom-pink flowers.

• Height: 1.2m
• Space plants: 38-4scm

‘Fru Dagmar Hastrup’: Single, flesh-pink, delicate flowers.

• Height: 1.2-1.5m
• Space plants: 60-75cm

‘Roseraie de I’Hay’: Double, rich wine-purple, scented flowers.

• Height: 1.5m
• Space plants: 60-75cm

‘White Pet’: White, pompon-like flowers.

• Height: 60cm
• Space plants: 30-38cm

‘Windrush’: Lemon-yellow, fragrant flowers.

• Height: 1.2m
• Space plants: 45cm