How to care for assorted types of hedges?
Hedge care is an important garden chore that can easily go neglected. Fully understanding what is required with your hedge makes the whole endeavor much easier in the long run.
Understanding what type of hedge you have will ultimately determine what you will need to do, as each species and style will have different needs. To make things easier we’ve put together the top five things to consider.
What are you trying to achieve?
The first step when caring for a bush or shrub is knowing why it needs to be done. Are you wanting more flowers? More fruit? More flowers so fewer bugs are eating your plants growing next door? Knowing this should give you a good idea of what kind of plant life should be used.
Fruit-bearing bush or shrub
These are pretty self-explanatory, but to put it simply if you want fruit make sure the plant has plenty of room to grow. If space is an issue for your current plant either move it out to accommodate its growth needs or consider planting two separate plants side by side that will be able to one day meet up at the top. It’ll take time, but this way there are no limits on where each plant can go. The second option is best if your garden only has one good spot for a fruiting hedge.
Pollinator bush or shrub
Wanting more flowers means making pets out of pollinators! These types of brushes work well when placed near to where you garden or grow food. Pollinators are essential in the garden because they act as nature’s little helpers by transferring pollen from one flower to another. This increases seed production and helps make sure all of your plants get pollinated when the time comes.
Hedges could be evergreens, meaning no pruning is required, but generally hedging is meant to keep things out rather than in; therefore, hedges like these should be well-trimmed. To help slow down the weeds that tend to try and elbow their way into newly opened space simply cut along the top edge of your hedging bush with a weed whacker or string trimmer, this will help prevent light from getting in and any grasses growing underneath.
What does your hedging bush look like?
The second step is knowing what kind of hedging you have planted. Is it a multi-stemmed plant with wide spacing between each stem? Or is it a thick conifer hedging that has been grown as a privacy screen? Knowing what type of hedging you have will save you the trouble later down the line.
Conifer Hedging
Conifer hedges are great because they grow very quickly and are dense right from the beginning. With these hedges, it is usually recommended to cut off the tip of each branch every year or two to encourage more branching out rather than up. If you keep this up then your conifers should end up looking like a hedge maze! Just make sure that if there are any low branches that people could potentially walk under then either remove them or cut them back lower down, especially if there are children or pets in your family.
