help; new build and after 18 months this is the current state of the hedge. Am sure there are many issues from compacted soil to possible lack of nutrients, but any suggestions on what to do first
I know it sounds really scary, but cut them all hard back to about one foot from the ground. Give them a sprinkling of fish, blood and bone (a slow acting organic fertiliser) at the rate on the pack.
Don't overwater, but also don't let the soil dry out over the summer ... check by sticking your finger through the bark chippings into the ground up to your first finger joint ... if it's dry down there give them a soaking and then don't water again until the finger test says they're dry.
You'll get a lovely lush hedge in a couple of years' time.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Well two months on and my poor little laurels took a battering. The constant torrential rain drowned them and they went all brown. i picked all the brown bits off and the new shoots are appearing nice and green. I cant believe it. The central one is dead as can be so i can replace that one with a spare i had. I need to weed the area i know. Just a little update...Andrea
Apologies in advance for the long post - I've just found this thread and find myself in a similar position to befuddled but without the benefit of the advice to aggressively cut back my laurels. This is possibly a good case study for what happens over 2 years if you don't cut your laurels back aggressively.
We moved house in 2015 and from arrival it was clear that there was something not right with the front garden hedge. On the right hand side of the gate (looking out) several of the bushes had wilted right away and over the course of the first year the problem got worse. We have a gardener who comes for an hour a week and he advised that the ground wasn't draining properly on that side and that the roots had likely rotted away. He recommended that we remove bushes and lawn, add a couple of lorry loads of soil and start again.
The first pictures below are from May 2016 on the day we had the works carried out showing before and after.
I didn't know this at the time but I have marked on the right hand picture the approximate location of a soakaway. This captures all the rainfall from the roof of the house and garage. This appears to drain out under the front wall and into the road. After rainfall the road remains wet for several days. I think this is the actual cause of the original problem, but the solution of adding more soil should have helped.
Pictures below: May 2016 - Before Left hand side bushes - reasonable hedge although not super thick.
Right hand side bushes - 5 or 6 very straggly bushes to the left of the lime tree. Note - the lime tree was nearly 3 times as tall, it had rotted away and a giant branch snapped off and fell in the road so we had it cut back - presumably also suffering from the excess of water caused by the soakaway. It's been doing fine at the new height.
Picture Below: May 2016 - After This picture shows how the bushess arrived and that they were hopefully not planted too deep.
After the work was carried out you can see the lawns are curved more to help drainage and higher than before. The new plants came in pots and were about 6ft high. I was extremely disappointed with them as I thought I was buying a ready made hedge but was reassured that they would grow quickly. I had asked for 'laurels but not cherry laurels' as I'd read they were poisonous but it turns out that they are cherry laurels.
Pictures below: Sep 2016 4 months after planting and there had been minimal growth. Initially they seemed to die away, particularly in the middle. So they appear to be growing at the bottom and at the top but not in the middle. Some of them have nearly a metre of main stem without a single growing branch. It's starting to become apparent that the right hand side bushes are growing better than the left hand side bushes. This is odd because the initial problem was the right hand side bushes dying presumably because of too much water. Perhaps in the establishing phase a lot of water is a good thing?
Picture below - Apr 2017
Nearly a year after planting and still limited growth but lots of flowering at the top (this was when I realised they were probably cherry laurels). Pictures below - Jun 2017 Right hand side definitely doing better than the left hand side but neither side really growing at all in the middle - just the bottom and top.
In September 2017 I cut back maybe 20-30cms from the top.
Pictures below - Apr 2018
This picture shows the problem - growth at the top and bottom but long main stems that have remained very bare.
So you can see, not a huge amount of progress in two years. I'm still a long way off what I started with on the left hand side. The right hand side at least seems to be growing evenly, i.e. I don't have the long stretch where nothing is growing properly.
I have two main concerns:
One - the bushes just aren't growing in the middle. From what I've read here I think I need to chop them back right down to the bushy lower section and then in a couple more years I should be in good shape.
Two - I didn't really want cherry laurels - I don't mind the flowering but I don't like the fruit on the ground for about a month at the end of the summer. Befuddled - are yours cherry laurels? I couldn't see the flowering like I have in any of your pictures. If I'm going to cut them back aggressively, I could just start again completely with new smaller plants that aren't cherry laurels. Or if I kept it well trimmed, would this reduce/prevent the flower growth and fruit production?
Not sure what mine are, but they are currently flowering as per the pic. To be honest the flowers never really get established and are soon gone. Especially if you prune around this time.
I can't give you any advice really as I'm clueless. But anecdotally I think having watched mine grow I'd say yours are slightly too close together, too close to the wall, and look remarkably like mine did when they arrived. I got mine from a rogue on ebay and they turned out to be rootballed stuffed in a pot. Where did your gardener get them?
I wouldn't replace them now - the roots will have been establishing in the last couple of years. Mine didn't do anything in the first season and quite little in the next.
The trouble is with those long stems they'll never grow new shoots off them without a cut, they'll just have single leaves, so they are pretty useless now. Looking at my old stems they are still bare in the middle of the plant. If yours are to fill out in the middle it needs to come from the lower part of the plant, and all my new growth happens towards the top of the plant. The bottoms of mine still look like the bottoms of yours.
If those thick stems are cut however, you get multiple shoots off them within 12" of the cut point. I've taken a couple of pics to try and show. Top pic has six or seven shoots from one cut, and bottom pic has two shoots that are now about 3ft in length and have multiple shoots of their own. That's where the growth is!
It's an absolute sickener, but as you know the advice I received was to chop them in half
If you want to try one more year, cut every stem you can find especially lower down. Just take 3" off every shoot end and hope for the best that they divide.
Hedgingmybets, I'm not sure if Befuddled is around, but after looking at your time-line and photos, it is very obvious your 'instant' hedge is not as straight forward as it seems. The reality is, where the wall protection was gone and where the railings started, your shrubs suffered because they were very tall.
They really need to be pruned down by half. Or to where the height of your low wall is which is over half of your current shrub height. The gaps in between are unlikely to recover. Just prune them down, and they will recover and grow more bushy from that height.
Also, you need to be more specific when asking for Laurels. Not all suppliers are careful and ask you more questions.
Absolutely agree ... cut them all hard back ... give them some Fish, Blood & Bone and mulch with well-rotted farmyard manure, or soil conditioner ... both available in bags from garden centres.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I wasn’t sure of the real question by the time I got to the bottom of the post😀 i think the poster knows the problem they have said this is what happens when you don’t cut them right back on planting. As the above post, be ruthless cut them down to the height of the wall, they’ll be lovely by this summer.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Thanks very much for all of your comments - I've bitten the bullet and cut them back. I've also tried befuddled's advice and cut back the stems lower down in the hope that they divide and encourage the growth to bush out. The fish, blood and bone is going on today.
Time to sit back, wait and cross fingers. Thanks for giving me the confidence to do this.
Posts
help; new build and after 18 months this is the current state of the hedge. Am sure there are many issues from compacted soil to possible lack of nutrients, but any suggestions on what to do first
Don't overwater, but also don't let the soil dry out over the summer ... check by sticking your finger through the bark chippings into the ground up to your first finger joint ... if it's dry down there give them a soaking and then don't water again until the finger test says they're dry.
You'll get a lovely lush hedge in a couple of years' time.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
We moved house in 2015 and from arrival it was clear that there was something not right with the front garden hedge. On the right hand side of the gate (looking out) several of the bushes had wilted right away and over the course of the first year the problem got worse. We have a gardener who comes for an hour a week and he advised that the ground wasn't draining properly on that side and that the roots had likely rotted away. He recommended that we remove bushes and lawn, add a couple of lorry loads of soil and start again.
The first pictures below are from May 2016 on the day we had the works carried out showing before and after.
I didn't know this at the time but I have marked on the right hand picture the approximate location of a soakaway. This captures all the rainfall from the roof of the house and garage. This appears to drain out under the front wall and into the road. After rainfall the road remains wet for several days. I think this is the actual cause of the original problem, but the solution of adding more soil should have helped.
Pictures below: May 2016 - Before
Left hand side bushes - reasonable hedge although not super thick.
Right hand side bushes - 5 or 6 very straggly bushes to the left of the lime tree. Note - the lime tree was nearly 3 times as tall, it had rotted away and a giant branch snapped off and fell in the road so we had it cut back - presumably also suffering from the excess of water caused by the soakaway. It's been doing fine at the new height.
Picture Below: May 2016 - After
This picture shows how the bushess arrived and that they were hopefully not planted too deep.
After the work was carried out you can see the lawns are curved more to help drainage and higher than before. The new plants came in pots and were about 6ft high. I was extremely disappointed with them as I thought I was buying a ready made hedge but was reassured that they would grow quickly. I had asked for 'laurels but not cherry laurels' as I'd read they were poisonous but it turns out that they are cherry laurels.
Pictures below: Sep 2016
4 months after planting and there had been minimal growth. Initially they seemed to die away, particularly in the middle. So they appear to be growing at the bottom and at the top but not in the middle. Some of them have nearly a metre of main stem without a single growing branch. It's starting to become apparent that the right hand side bushes are growing better than the left hand side bushes. This is odd because the initial problem was the right hand side bushes dying presumably because of too much water. Perhaps in the establishing phase a lot of water is a good thing?
Picture below - Apr 2017
Nearly a year after planting and still limited growth but lots of flowering at the top (this was when I realised they were probably cherry laurels).
Pictures below - Jun 2017
In September 2017 I cut back maybe 20-30cms from the top.
Pictures below - Apr 2018
This picture shows the problem - growth at the top and bottom but long main stems that have remained very bare.
So you can see, not a huge amount of progress in two years. I'm still a long way off what I started with on the left hand side. The right hand side at least seems to be growing evenly, i.e. I don't have the long stretch where nothing is growing properly.
I have two main concerns:
One - the bushes just aren't growing in the middle. From what I've read here I think I need to chop them back right down to the bushy lower section and then in a couple more years I should be in good shape.
Two - I didn't really want cherry laurels - I don't mind the flowering but I don't like the fruit on the ground for about a month at the end of the summer. Befuddled - are yours cherry laurels? I couldn't see the flowering like I have in any of your pictures. If I'm going to cut them back aggressively, I could just start again completely with new smaller plants that aren't cherry laurels. Or if I kept it well trimmed, would this reduce/prevent the flower growth and fruit production?
Any thoughts welcome! Thanks in advance.
Hello.
Not sure what mine are, but they are currently flowering as per the pic. To be honest the flowers never really get established and are soon gone. Especially if you prune around this time.
I can't give you any advice really as I'm clueless. But anecdotally I think having watched mine grow I'd say yours are slightly too close together, too close to the wall, and look remarkably like mine did when they arrived. I got mine from a rogue on ebay and they turned out to be rootballed stuffed in a pot. Where did your gardener get them?
I wouldn't replace them now - the roots will have been establishing in the last couple of years. Mine didn't do anything in the first season and quite little in the next.
The trouble is with those long stems they'll never grow new shoots off them without a cut, they'll just have single leaves, so they are pretty useless now. Looking at my old stems they are still bare in the middle of the plant. If yours are to fill out in the middle it needs to come from the lower part of the plant, and all my new growth happens towards the top of the plant. The bottoms of mine still look like the bottoms of yours.
If those thick stems are cut however, you get multiple shoots off them within 12" of the cut point. I've taken a couple of pics to try and show. Top pic has six or seven shoots from one cut, and bottom pic has two shoots that are now about 3ft in length and have multiple shoots of their own. That's where the growth is!
It's an absolute sickener, but as you know the advice I received was to chop them in half
If you want to try one more year, cut every stem you can find especially lower down. Just take 3" off every shoot end and hope for the best that they divide.
Thanks, Befuddled.
They really need to be pruned down by half. Or to where the height of your low wall is which is over half of your current shrub height. The gaps in between are unlikely to recover. Just prune them down, and they will recover and grow more bushy from that height.
Also, you need to be more specific when asking for Laurels. Not all suppliers are careful and ask you more questions.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
i think the poster knows the problem they have said this is what happens when you don’t cut them right back on planting.
As the above post, be ruthless cut them down to the height of the wall, they’ll be lovely by this summer.
Time to sit back, wait and cross fingers. Thanks for giving me the confidence to do this.
If it helps, mine were in a much worse state than yours in May 2015...
...and are now so big they'd completely obscure your brick posts.