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Can I start a holly hedge with bareroot plants?
chicky
Posts: 10,405
We want to plant up a holly hedge this autumn. When we have planted hedges previously (beech) we used bareroot whips. All the providers I have looked at so far only seem to supply holly as container plants. Is this because it doesn't take well from bareroot ? Or have I just not looked hard enough for a bareroot supplier?
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I'm not sure that you'll find one - the thing about bare root whips is that they have no leaves, preventing water loss through them. Holly is an evergreen, so that's not possible.
I planted a holly hedge 10 years ago. We had to buy 60 plants lifted in late autumn and with their root balls wrapped in hessian. It was a particularly freezing December so we had to hide them all in a barn till early January when it thawed just enough to dig a trench with the rotavator and get them planted.
I had a holly which I snapped off small piece & just pushed into ground to see what happened & it did take
Well, the Hedge down the lane from us contains Holly, bare root planted 2 years ago, and believe me very little care was taken about planting. Dig a slit, shove the Holly in. close the slit and on to the next one. They all seem to have taken and are growing.
I started my sons hedge with mix bushs including holly.They were small seedlings when I dug them up and replanted to hedge.Slow growing and tough is a holly and they need to be male and female if you want those berries.