Plants Suitable For Green Hedges

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Green hedge - no worse than metal, but much more beautiful

If you pay attention to the fences created by summer residents and gardeners in recent years, then their capital and the associated considerable financial costs involuntarily catch the eye.

Meanwhile, as evidenced by my personal experience and the experience of many other site owners, you can protect yourself from intruders more efficiently with the help of hedges, which are even more difficult to get through than to climb over a fence. And the air at the site becomes much cleaner.

Unfortunately, when creating hedges, many summer residents and gardeners make many serious mistakes, and especially often if conifers are used for this, for example, spruce, pine, transplanted from the nearest forest. At the same time, in an effort to quickly create such a hedge, summer residents often take adult trees with an open root system or with a damaged root. It is clear that the tree does not take root in these cases.

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The same disappointment awaits the owner of the site in the event that a tree dug in the forest grew on light sandy soil, and is planted in heavy clay soil. The same thing happens when too many horizontal roots are cut off the tree. Purchased seedlings of fir and other conifers from Europe or the USA practically do not take root in our climatic conditions. From my own experience, I can say that juniper takes root well in the plots, but only if a number of strict requirements are met.

Required: early transplant, when the ground is only slightly thawed; planting a tree at a shallow depth with spreading of the roots in the surface layer of the soil to a depth of no more than 10 cm; mulching the soil with coniferous litter with a layer of 3-5 cm; artificial shading or placement under other trees, but not under apple trees, which in this case are infected with rust; cutting the tree annually before new needles begin to grow. If all this is provided, then the juniper is quite capable of becoming not only a protection and decoration of the site, but a source of phytoncides and a tamer of putrefactive fungi and bacteria, influenza viruses and even tubercle bacilli.

However, based on experience, I can say that many deciduous species, which are distinguished not only by high decorativeness, but also by their unpretentiousness to soil and maintenance, are quite successfully able to compete with the named conifers of trees in hedges.

Especially effective are honeysuckle, irga, black chokeberry, hawthorn, beautiful fruit, cypress and Gynall's maple. The first three plants are long-term berry bushes characterized by high winter hardiness, rich leaf apparatus and beautiful flowers. The fruits of these plants contain many different nutrients with both nutritional and medicinal value.

They tolerate pruning well, limiting growth in height and giving dense lateral branches. I would also like to note that recently, edible honeysuckle has revealed a sister-honeysuckle, whose fruits, although inedible, are in no way inferior in decorativeness to girlish grapes and even clematis. The flowers of honeysuckle have a strong and pleasant aroma, and the bright orange berries and dark green leaves retain their color until late autumn.

From hawthorns, two varieties have become more and more widely used for hedges - Siberian and Canadian, and, according to the reviews of the owners of such plots, one cannot but admire the bright foliage and abundant flowering of these plants. They tolerate a haircut well, and it is easy for them to give any dense, beautiful shape. A strong wall fence is best achieved with a short cut, due to which the eyes develop well and no voids form inside the fence.

To get a green wall faster, in some cases pruning is practiced only from the sides, and the branches of neighboring plants are crossed among themselves and tightly tied. According to one of the neighbors on the site, the Canadian hawthorn is more promising than the Siberian hawthorn, since for 4-5 years it yields up to 15-20 kg of fruits per bush, and very beautiful and sweet, suitable both for eating raw and for cooking of them compotes, liqueurs and medicinal tinctures.

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Dwarf cypress and Ginall's maple are quite worthy of attention for creating green hedges. At the same time, the first is distinguished by evergreen foliage, which over time can acquire yellowish and reddish hues, immediately attracting attention to itself. If the plant is cut in the spring and the soil under it is mulched in the summer, then it grows well and becomes not only a protector, but also a true decoration of any site.

The Ginalla maple has graceful, shiny leaves that change their color from dark green in summer to fiery red in autumn. The flowers of the maple are creamy white, which, in combination with the leaves, give an exceptionally beautiful hedge tone. Maple bears fruit annually and gives dense branching with regular low shearing.

I believe that any summer resident or gardener who thinks about the protection and attractiveness of his site can more reasonably approach the choice of one or another plant. At the same time, given the small size of the plots, you should not overload them with expensive imposing, but it is better to limit yourself to modest plants that correspond to our nature and bear beneficial fruits along with beauty.