It's your garden so you can do whatever you like. But if you feel you can't remove them because your neighbour likes the hedge, personally I would start by giving them a harsh trim on your side. Then in 6 months you can say they looked awful, were told they weren't going to recover, and they just had to go. Then you can dig them up and put something to your taste in their place.
Thank you everyone, and thanks for the pics Mrs Glaze. Great advice. We have trimmed (!!) the heights down to about 6ft now and tidied up the straggly sides but the hedge has a huge gap in the centre and is pretty much 5 foot wide. We are going to try and keep them as even after taking the height down it has help get more light and air into the garden. We have our Star Jasmines to be planted and these will hopefully grow up the trunks. Along the back fence we have harshly cut back so that the growth is all on 1 side only and the trunks will have the evergreens and we hope will look pretty. Along the back we have gained 5 foot!! Thank you all for your input and suggestions. ***Edited to say the leylandi were along 1 side of the garden and along the back too. The side has just been trimmed and the back we are experimenting with the star jasmine. Our neighbour has also said that he was just a bit shocked when we originally revealed our plans and has said that he totally supports our choices.
I too inherited Leylandii hedge, about 5 metres tall x 25m long - totally out of control at the top but at some point been chainsawed to death up to 2m, leaving it very top heavy, plus ugly, browning and gappy just where the privacy and shade in the garden would be welcome. There must be about 100 trees there so the task of digging it all out and replacing it would be enormous, very costly and leave me exposed for ages to the road on the other side.
So, I too thought of trying to grow climbers on the innermost, north side after topping it down to a more manageable height, not recommended I see due to soil compaction/depletion, BUT...
If what has been hacked back never grows again, would it be possible to chop it lower, hack off all the branches, pile on loads of organic matter and use the 25cm-apart trunks as a framework for climbers? Or would even the bare trunks continue to leach the newly enriched soil of all nutrients? Any thoughts?
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Not sure whether the trunks would just die off or whether the roots would continue to grow. You might just have to try it and see. One thing I did think off is whether you could put horizontal supports ( using the cut down trunks perhaps) across the top of the trunks at a suitable height thus making a kind of rustic pergola effect and perhaps grow climbing roses/evergreen climbers along it to shield you from the road?
The roots won't take any more nutrients once all the top growth has been removed and will die, slowly rotting away over time. The downside of that is the dead trunks will eventually become unstable and fall but that will likely take several years.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
Great advice, thanks Lizzie and Bob - good to know I don’t have to dig out all those stumps. I am thinking maybe a mix of climbing roses and evergreen honeysuckle, so the idea of horizontal bracing the old trunks would make a better support structure for training the plants along as well as up
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
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It's your garden so you can do whatever you like. But if you feel you can't remove them because your neighbour likes the hedge, personally I would start by giving them a harsh trim on your side. Then in 6 months you can say they looked awful, were told they weren't going to recover, and they just had to go. Then you can dig them up and put something to your taste in their place.
We are going to try and keep them as even after taking the height down it has help get more light and air into the garden.
We have our Star Jasmines to be planted and these will hopefully grow up the trunks. Along the back fence we have harshly cut back so that the growth is all on 1 side only and the trunks will have the evergreens and we hope will look pretty. Along the back we have gained 5 foot!!
Thank you all for your input and suggestions.
***Edited to say the leylandi were along 1 side of the garden and along the back too. The side has just been trimmed and the back we are experimenting with the star jasmine.
Our neighbour has also said that he was just a bit shocked when we originally revealed our plans and has said that he totally supports our choices.
So, I too thought of trying to grow climbers on the innermost, north side after topping it down to a more manageable height, not recommended I see due to soil compaction/depletion, BUT...
If what has been hacked back never grows again, would it be possible to chop it lower, hack off all the branches, pile on loads of organic matter and use the 25cm-apart trunks as a framework for climbers? Or would even the bare trunks continue to leach the newly enriched soil of all nutrients? Any thoughts?