Forum home Garden design
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

HELP...what to do with Leylandii hedge

Hi 

We've recently moved and inherited a garden with leylandii hedge on all the boundaries. The hedge is 7ft high so thankfully still manageable, but we have a number of issues.

1) The garden is a pretty reasonable size, roughly 12x15m but the hedge 'eats' a good meter plus on each boundary

2) It appears to offer zero value to wildlife, something we're trying to maximize in the garden.

3) It's created a dead zone alongside it where the soil is too dry and too poor for anything else to survive (also not helping wildlife issue)

4) It's not been well maintained and so is patchy, Brown in places and generally visually unappealing!

5) Needs cutting regularly through summer... a big job as on two boundaries we're responsible for cutting both sides.

Perfect world we'd rip it out, grind out the stumps and replace with a nice native hedge, but there are several complications. One boundary is with a well used public footpath and another is with a car park, so there a privacy issue. We have two kids under 4 so there's a security issue. We don't have the money to pay someone to remove them all, and either purchase sufficiently mature hedging or fencing. 

Any thoughts? Should I just deal with it in the hope one day we'll be able to do it 'properly' or is there anything we can do in the meantime? !?

Thanks

Posts

  • hogweedhogweed Posts: 4,053

    You could look on this as a long term project and replace one boundary every 5 years. That would give each new hedge time to grow. But you will always have that 'loss' of about 1m for the width of the hedge and the problem of dry soil at the border.

    I have leylandii hedge on 2 sides of my garden about 6-7 ft tall. It gets cut once a year in Oct/Nov time and still stays neat all year.

    'Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement' - Helen Keller
  • LoganLogan Posts: 2,532
    I agree with pansyface
Sign In or Register to comment.