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Hedge advice
malraff
Posts: 16
Hi all
hoping someone can help a complete novice!
recently moved into our new house (nireland) and want to plant an evergreen hedge/trees around the boundary.
land for the hedge will be quite boggy, and at times of the year water logged, to make it enough more difficult it's open high ground so will be quite a chill in winter along with Many a gale 
So what do I plant? I have access to free laurels, but will they survive? I'd prefer the right job over a cheap job.
i have sheep fence currently around the boundary which I plan to apply wind breaks to aid the hedge.
What can I do to the ground to aid it? Should I get some compost/top solid introduced to the areas where I plan to plant?
Any help appreciated
mal
0
Posts
I'm nearly in the same boat...literally. It's been a bit wet here this "Summer"..
I'm looking at Hornbeam as it copes with wet. I'm going to put in some mixed native too as I like the look of a trad hedge. One or t'other or a mix of both. I can't decide.
There's a decent nursery in Newtownards that a friend of mine uses and he does mail order. I don't know exactly where you are but there's one does bare root hedging somewhere near Lisbellaw too.
The laurel (do you mean griselinia) has big fleshy leaves and isn't a fan of frost or wind IME. Mine died of drought during a bad Winter!
Have a look at hornbeam. It makes a lovely formal hedge and should cope with the vagaries of our climate.
hi !
feel like i done some research right then as the only name i had narrowed to was horn beam!
thats the laurel i am chatting about! Sound like id be best avoiding then.
Im up tyrone direction, but down belfast often so must check out a few of the nurseries!
I'm near Trillick
Up a windy mountain in a peat bog!
Willow Would work well. Won't be evergreen but if you do a fedge and cross cross the stems when you plant it will look very effective in the winter. Will also happily stand in the wet - possibly improve it. If it's as wet as you say, can you do something to drain it, build a pond , channel the water away?
Sounds like my spot plant pauper!
Not much i can do with the ground topsoiled as most of the issue lyes with sorrunding land that isnt mine, its wet marshy land, but not overly so, just parts of it can get a bit water logged especially with august weather in NI
HaHa! Oh look...a peat bog!!!
That's very exposed looking mal. Personally I'd go native hedgerow. Whatever grows well locally and gives you a bit of shelter too. Willows grow like weeds here and would do well but you could get away with hawthorn, ash, hornbeam pretty much anything there. It depends how formal you want it to be.
Mixed native = straggly, hornbeam = neater and tidier but no berries and little wildlife.
It sure is
thanks for advice pp, any thoughts on green leylandii?
Hate them with a passion but I see some conifers in the background of one of the pics and know a lot of folk round here use them as windbreaks. If you have room for them then why not. They can be kept as a reasonable size of hedge too. My mum's had a conifer hedge for donkey's and it's beautiful at about 8ft with two trims a year to take off the "hairy" bits.
The only snag I can see with the conifers is the shallow root system if you let them get huge. I have some big green monsters along a sheugh and because the roots are only effective on one side they are couping over the other way and taking the bank up with them. Is that ditch going to be filled in because if not you may find them going over into the field and taking your lovely stock fence with them. If you keep them "hedge" sized you'd probably be ok.
ditch will only be filled a little as it rolls into my lawns, hedge will be planted on the ditch, think your right about the rooting of leylandii, will be a little weak for any real stability