Live Fences: Low, Medium And High, Picking Plants

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

Read the previous part. ← Live fences made of deciduous plants

Low living fences

Some evergreen barberries, such as Berberis buxifolia variety Nana, are well-growing ornamental shrubs with rich flowering and beautiful greenery, suitable for creating low fences up to about 40 cm in height.

It tolerates pruning well, is undemanding to conditions, it develops well even in dry sandy soils, both in the sun and in partial shade.

They recommend for planting a pleasant-looking, low and densely growing boxwood of an ordinary variety: "Suffruticosa" with glossy green leaves, as well as some varieties of Fortunov's euonymus, for example, the Variegatuts variety with grayish-whitish-green leaves strewn with veins, often pink in color; glossy honeysuckle Lonicera nitiba with many dense and shiny green branches, abundantly dotted with leaves, and silk honeysuckle Lonicera pileata, distinguished by glossy green leaves and fragrant pale yellow flowers. The latter species grows both in a sunny place and in partial shade, moreover, it is more hardy than glossy honeysuckle.

Gardener's guide

Plant nurseries Stores of goods for summer cottages Landscape design studios

Medium green fences

The best evergreen deciduous plants, used both trimmed and freely growing, which you plant to create a living fence up to a meter tall, is the well-known and popular Mahonia aqufolium. This plant looks very fresh all year round, especially due to its lush green foliage, which in the Atropurpurea culture turns into magnificent crimson-red tones by autumn.

Its yellow flowers and ripe fruits are adorable, which adorn the bush in autumn with clusters of oily blackish-bluish pearls. Magonia is a humble plant; it suits any moist garden soil, best of all - clay and even silty, containing lime. Partial shade suits her best, but she grows well in the sun, and even in deep shade. In order to keep the bushes low and thick, they must be trimmed immediately after the end of flowering or before the onset of winter. For the winter, all these plants must be covered with coniferous spruce branches.

Fences 1-2 meters high can be grown from ordinary boxwood. For example Boxus sempervirens var. Arborescens is a shrub that does not shed its small leathery glossy green leaves for the winter. Once a well-known plant that adorned French garden architecture in the old days, it is great for clipped and free-growing living fences. Several boxwood crops have been bred, which differ in leaf shape and color, white or variegated yellow. Two crops of Laurocerassus officinalis (Laurocerassus officinalis) - Schipkaensis and especially Zabeliana - are very suitable for planting living fences, which are hardy and tolerate drought well.

A popular plant in a living fence is the pyracantha (Pyracantha cocinea). This is a thorny bush with glossy leaves of a juicy green color, many white flowers, collected in sultanas. In the fall, cinnabar-red or orange pea-sized fruits appear that stay on the branches for a long time. Pyracantha needs good, dry, moisture-permeable soil and sunny places. Over time, this plant creates an impenetrable evergreen living fence, even in the light partial shade of taller trees growing nearby. Plants that are not trimmed reach a height of 2-3 m, however, by cutting them, you can keep the growth of the pyracantha at the desired level.

High living fences

For planting living fences exceeding a two-meter level, not only many varieties of ornamental tree species are suitable, but also a number of other woody plants widespread in nature. For this purpose, maples, hornbeams, dogwood, oaks, poplars, roses, acacia, and dogwood are used.

Evergreen privet (Ligustum vulgare) - Atrovirens - is suitable both for creating lower trimmed living fences with a height of one to two meters, and for forming high fences up to 2-4 meters. This beautiful frost-hardy variety grows slowly, it is characterized by juicy green leaves, colored by the fall in purple-brown tones. Oval-leaved privet (Ligustum ovalifolum) sheds foliage only in very severe winters. It has dark green, bluish-green leaves and creamy white flowers on the underside, collected in bunches, in long, up to 10 cm, and dense panicles. The plant tolerates shade and pruning well. It is best planted in sheltered locations. Privet is undemanding to the soil, in a relatively short time it is possible to grow a high, up to 5 m, living fence from it.

It is customary for us to grow live jasmine fences. In practice, most often we meet with ordinary jasmine, or holly (llexaquifolium), which is characterized by a pyramidal shape; there are specimens representing a bush with sparse branches. The leaves of this species are glossy, green and tough, and the edges are jagged. The plant takes root well both on the sunny side and in the shade, it is planted alone. It decorates the garden not only with its peculiar foliage, but also with many bright coral-red fruits.

Read the next part. Caring for plants in a green fence, pruning, watering, diseases →