If you have a newly planted hedge in your garden, or an established hedge to maintain, here are some tips that you may find useful in keeping your hedges looking great without a huge amount of effort on your part – especially if you have a good petrol hedge trimmer to help you.
If you have just planted an evergreen hedge for example a box hedge, you should cut it back straight after planting by as much as one third. For more vigorous hedges like privet or hawthorn, you can cut this right back to only six inches in height when you have planted it. The year after planting, just give it a Lifestyle Block Maintenance as you are encouraging it to ‘get going’ and then the following year, give it a really good cut back again by as much as a third during the winter, dormant period. This will encourage growth from the bottom to give you a nice thick hedge which you can start shaping into a proper hedge in the following year.
A useful tip for cutting more established, formal hedges is to make yourself a framework by placing a post or cane at the four corners of the area in which you are working. This might be a section of a long hedge, or the whole length of a shorter hedge. Use these posts or canes to attach string at the height you want your hedge to be cut to and use this as your guide for both height and width to ensure you are staying ‘on the straight and narrow’! Even with this guide in place you would be well advised to check your handiwork by stepping away from the hedge and looking back down the line at your work to see if there are any uneven areas or bulges.
Have you ever gone out into your garden the day after cutting your hedge and noticed all those little bits of twigs sticking out and wondered how you missed them when you cut your hedge? The answer is that they weren’t there when you cut it! What happens is that they spring out from being curled up inside the hedge after you have cut it. A really good tip here is to give each section of your hedge a few good whacks with the back of a sprung rake, the little bits will spring out saving you the annoyance of discovering them the following day!
When you are cutting your formal hedging, always try to leave the top slightly narrower than the bottom. This results in a gently sloping side which is better for wind resistance, makes the top less wide and therefore easier to cut and is the traditional way of cutting formal hedges.
I hope that these hedge trimming tips will prove useful to you in your garden and that you will enjoy using a petrol hedge trimmer to create a thing of beauty and a haven for wildlife that is the garden hedge.