How To Grow A Living Fence In A Garden

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

Plants for green hedge

The art of growing hedges has been known for a long time. Plots surrounded by hedges visually expand the space, and the plot itself does not seem to be closed, which is often the case when it is fenced with a high and solid fence. Of course, hedges require maintenance and usually don't grow in one year, but nothing else will create such a natural backdrop for your home and other garden plantings.

Moreover, a hedge, in addition to its usual functions: to protect from the wind, trap snow, shelter the area from prying eyes and delimit it into zones, may have several additional functions.

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For example, a hedge can be made of flowering plants or plants with fragrant flowers - such a hedge is gorgeous in itself and is a very original composition. In order for the flowering not to fade away, you should pick up plants that bloom at different times, one after another. And in some shrubs, not only flowers are decorative, but also foliage or fruits (see table).

Plants for flowering hedges

Flowering time, flowers	Rose wrinkled
Forsythia	very early flowering before the leaves open
Barberry	foliage of different colors in different varieties, very decorative in autumn
Hawthorn
Decorative apple tree
Lilac
Viburnum
Japonica
Irga

Another additional function of a hedge is protective, because a hedge made of shrubs can be not only very decorative, but also completely impenetrable for people and animals. The most common plants for protective hedges are barberry, hawthorn and Japanese quince. Each of them has its own advantages. Japanese quince, for example, forms a low, very dense hedge of natural outlines, which practically does not need a haircut and keeps its shape well.

Quince blooms very beautifully in late spring with large scarlet or orange flowers, and its fruits are edible, but it has few thorns. Barberry surpasses quince in thorniness, a hedge from it can be grown up to two meters high. It perfectly tolerates even an artistic haircut and has several varieties with decorative variegated foliage (yellow, burgundy, white-bordered, etc.).

Fruits, which also come in different colors, are also used for food and medicinal purposes. But the leader in "roundabout" is the hawthorn, he can become a real guard of your garden. Hawthorn is a fast growing and very flexible plant, due to its high growth rate it needs constant control and radical pruning. The thorns of this plant can reach 4 cm - no one can get through such a hedge!

The hawthorn hedge is further strengthened by splicing branches of neighboring bushes in the butt at the time of spring sap flow, such grafts grow together very well. The hawthorn has several very interesting decorative forms: black hawthorn or large-fruited hawthorn, which blooms with very large pink, double flowers. In autumn, the hawthorn foliage acquires a unique crimson-gold color.

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All three plants recommended for protective hedges are easily propagated by cuttings in the simplest film greenhouses, so you can grow your planting material fairly easily if you wish. When choosing plants for a hedge, you need to consider not only the intensity of their growth, but also the final size of the adult plant. For a high hedge (about two meters), you can use hawthorn, yellow acacia, thuja, irga canadensis, spirea spire, meadowsweet, forsythia, yew, junipers, Japanese quince …

A place for planting a hedge is prepared in advance. For a more accurate marking, it is better to use a twine pulled over the marking pegs. Along the line where the hedge will be located, sod is removed in a strip 50-100 cm wide, depending on how many rows the seedlings are planned to be planted. Then dig a trench deep on the bayonet of the shovel. With a close standing of groundwater, it is necessary to drain 10 cm of coarse gravel, broken brick or crimped cans.

Sod chopped with a shovel is laid on the drainage, and complex mineral fertilizers mixed with the ground (like Kemira) are scattered on it, 1-2 matchboxes per running meter. If the soil in the garden is very poor, it makes sense to add organic matter to the planting trench at 0.5-1 buckets per running meter. Fertilizers are sprinkled with earth on top, and planting is carried out. Seedlings with an open root system are planted in the fall, while those grown in containers can be planted at any time.

When buying ready-made seedlings, it is best to choose two-year-old plants, no higher than 50 cm, they are easier to transplant and take root faster in a new place. To obtain a wide and dense hedge, planting is carried out in a checkerboard pattern, along a cord (for an average hedge, approximate distances of 40/40/40). The soil near the stems is well compacted and watered. To reduce moisture evaporation and to suppress weed growth, the soil that is still wet should be mulched.

Peat chips, sawdust, or shredded bark can be used as mulch. A hedge of fast-growing deciduous shrubs should be cut off by 1/3 of its height immediately after planting in order to achieve early branching. Hedges are grown in two main varieties: shaped and loose. But even a free-growing hedge needs to pinch the shoots at the first stages of its growth, since in most shrubs the apical buds have more germination energy and inhibit the growth of lateral shoots.

If you give them free rein, the fence will quickly stretch out and be exposed from below. When the hedge has reached the desired size and shape, after cutting, you can use a growth inhibitor (for example, Stoprost) for spraying, which will inhibit the growth of shoots, which will allow the hedge to maintain its appearance and shape longer.