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Pruning Conifer Hedge
Meomye
Posts: 949
When is the best time to prune a Conifer hedge please?
0
Meomye
Posts: 949
Posts
This should answer your question.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=352
Birds are at the height of the nesting season now.
I agree. You shouldn't really be cutting any nesting sites back yet.
In my mind pruning and trimming are two different things - to me 'pruning' means cutting back to significantly change the shape of a plant, and I would not do that to a hedge at this time of year - indeed this would be illegal if it disturbed nesting birds.
However in my mind 'trimming' would be a light clip over the surface with hand shears or similar, to 'tidy' a formal evergreen hedge or 'statement' evergreen tree and I don't think this would disturb nesting birds who are used to regular activity in the garden if, as I say, it is done with hand shears.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks everyone, Ceres, I had read that link but I have no idea what 'variety' I have so I couldn't really follow it
. Dove, I just wanted to tidy it up a bit so I guess it is 'trimming'. I was really querying it because there seems to be some sort of fruit/berry on it and I wasn't sure whether I had to leave it til after it had finished.
Last year, in about the second week in June, a customer was fairly insistent that I cut the spriggy growth on a low hedge to 'tidy it up'. She is keen on birds and insisted there were no nests in the hedge. Within a couple of minutes I found myself in a stand-off with a pair of blackbirds who disagreed. They harried me until I stopped, and by that time a few other birds had joined in; I know now how a sparrowhawk feels.
Two things stand out from this: blackbirds are among the largest garden hedge-nesting birds and they hadn't been noticed, and many other species don't make half as much fuss and so you might not realise you are disturbing them.