Moving an established laurel hedge
LaCezi
Posts: 1
HI,
First time posting here. We have a lovely healthy laurel hedge (about 40 meters long) and about 4meters high which have been int he ground for around 5 years. We want to transplant it to the boundary which is between 3m and 5m behind the hedge, this will extend our garden by quite a bit.
3 gardening companies have said it's not worth transplanting them as it is likely they will not survive and will be less expensive to replace with a new hedge and just remove the old one. 1 gardening company said it is possible to transplant, but he would not give any guarantees.
Most non-experts are telling me that we should be able to transplant and the reason they are saying they don't want to is because they make more money on putting in a new hedge
It just feels so wrong to kill this lovely healthy hedge, plus we will lose so much privacy for the next 4 years while the new hedge is growing.
Does anyone have any experience of moving an established hedge ?
Any thoughts / advice as to whether we should risk it and move it, or just go with the experts position and pull it out and start again?
Thank you.
Last edited: 17 April 2017 08:17:44
Posts
At that height and length the amount of work involved would be huge in my opinion, and as mentioned there would be no guarantees that they would all survive which would make the 'new' hedge a hedge with gaps you would have to fill which would not necessarily match.
You could try transplanting a few of them and see how difficult it is and if they survive or not. I suspect they would need some drastic pruning after the transplant as their root systems would probably be compromised and they would not be able to support their leaves the same. Others on here would be able to confirm if I'm right or not.
Years ago, at my parents house, we transplanted an apple tree that had been in for 15 years or so. it had never produced much fruit in original position so it had to go, but we didn't want to wa it. So it was transplanted and since the transplant it produced tons of fruit. So you never know what can happen.
Cheers
why don't you plant a new hedge, then when it's big enough, take out the old one. Young plants always establish more quickly than moved old ones
In the sticks near Peterborough