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We have a privet hedge at the front and sides of the house. Its about 12m in length.
It had been allowed to bolt so is now far too high and far too thick.
When is the best time to cut it? Its green at the moment (as always) so to take about 500mm out of the top and maybe 200mm out of the front will expose all the woody stems and make it not green. Will that grow back with new growth? Or will i end up with a brown woody shrub with no green?
Also, how to cut it? It seems a bit thick for my corded or petrol hedge trimmer. It looks a bit thin and tangly for my chainsaw.
Cutting it stem bt stwm with secateurs seems a lot like a barber cutting hair one strand at a time.
Does anyone have any experience or wisdom on this topic?
Thanks
Ian
Privet is resilient. Hedge trimmers should do the job nicely, it will quickly green up with a bit of sunlight👍
Ok ace. And i guess now is good before spring growth and birds chosing nesting site?
If you're taking a lot off it can be wise to do one side per year so that it still has some good leaf coverage on one side while the other recovers / catches up. It also worth a think think a bit about shaping it in terms of where the light is coming from. When they overgrow theres a tendency for them to end up sloping outwards from the base - wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. On the north side of the hedge that means that side spends most of the day in shadow. So if you're giving it a major resize try to also bring the top edges inwards and narrow the top relative to the base so the sides get more sun.
It'll look bare to start with but there will be dormant buds on the old wood that will sprout when they get light.
Absolutely👍
This is great! Thanks all. Looks like im going be busy😀
Depending on the surface you're cutting over (pavers/tarmac/concrete is easy), maybe lay a tarp down? Makes it easier to clear up the brash.
Bear in mind the leaves will grow from new growth on small stalks, not the big chunky stuff. So cut back further than you want the final hedge size to be. I’ve cut mine back loads over the years. Will be impressed if you can manage to kill yours!
A reasonable petrol hedge trimmer will chew through provided the branches are small enough for a pair of "teeth" to get minimal purchase. The branch doesn't have to fit fully inside. Keep a set of loppers on hand though
Season-wise you're on the edge depending on the job, heavier cuts are better in winter so mccruiskeen's one-sided approach is good advice. There's no harm in having a ferret through for nests before you start
You will make a surprising amount of waste so the one-sided approach makes sense for disposal as well
It depends on the ground beneath, but I find that a tarp is a pain and can damage plants
so mccruiskeen’s one-sided approach is good advice.
Not so good that I've actually got out and re-shaped mine yet 🙂 Should pull my finger out really.
When is the best time to cut it? Its green at the moment (as always) so to take about 500mm out of the top and maybe 200mm out of the front will expose all the woody stems and make it not green. Will that grow back with new growth? Or will i end up with a brown woody shrub with no green?
Speaking from experience, you'll have a hell of a time actually killing it by accident. The old house had a privet hedge; no matter what I did to it, come Spring the first time it rains and is sunny at the same time it'd double in size. I moved three years ago, I noticed one of the first things the new owners did was butcher it back pretty much to stumps. Drove past again last week and it's easily 8' tall if not more.
I thought this was going to be a 'Manscaping' thread, very disappointing...
I agree that you will not kill it! We took 5' off the top and 5' off each side in an old house. And it came roaring back in the second spring....
This house we hard cut back privet and a leylandii by at least 3'. It still comes back....so much so that we took the privet out and replaced it with some beech.
I personally would do it now before nesting and without a frost forecast for a week or so.
Cut it back quite a bit further than you think as it will grow back very vigorously with long shoots. These will need cutting back regularly to encourage branching out and the hedge to thicken up again. There shouldn’t be any birds nesting for a good while yet, the earliest are Mistle thrushes in a few weeks. Don’t use a chainsaw except on clear large stems, in my experience the springiness in privet causes chain grab and can whip the chain off with painful, dangerous consequences! I’ve got examples of privet hedge in the garden over 90 years old, you’ll be very unlikely to kill them.
Slight thread hijack but can anyone explain why my privet loses all its leaves every winter - or better still how to cure it? Basically all the leaves go yellow then black and then fall off in about mid November.
It was planted as young shrubs about 3 years ago and is about 4ft high, and all my research suggests it didn’t establish (?) but no one seems to offer any solutions to a poorly established hedge.
Anyone got any ideas ?
Slight thread hijack but can anyone explain why my privet loses all its leaves every winter
You've got a deciduous variety of ligustrum?
I don’t think so as the very end 1m section stays green.
There shouldn’t be any birds nesting for a good while yet...snip
We've had a mild winter which might be causing confusion.
Blackbirds (for example) will return to old nests and, if they don't, they prefer the same site so it's worth having a look to see if you'll destroy this years bijou property/site
It still comes back….so much so that we took the privet out and replaced it with some beech.
I had a chuckle at that. The one thing that seems harder work than cutting the privet hedge at the front is cutting the beech one at the back. Privet does need cutting more often though.
Don't think you'd kill either by cutting back. Just look a bit bare for a few weeks. You'll probably need loppers, a hand saw or a powerful petrol trimmer to get through the big stalks though if cutting back a lot.
Mid-November, neither excessively cold nor dry probably. Dunno
Cut it while its very windy, saves clearing all the clippings up👍🏼
That partly evergreen hedge could be just down to a mix up at the nursery or wherever. A couple of different varieties mixed in and planted out randomly? Don't overthink it.
Back in 2000 when I was a student in Aberdeen my flatmate and I got paid by our landlady to hack the 30 yard long privet hedge in our buildings car park down from about 15' tall and wide to a single row of stumps 3' tall. We did it in late October/early November. We only needed loppers, hand saws and the brash overconfidence of 19 year olds to cut it down but a fair size of a petrol chipper and a skip for disposing of the mahoosive pile of branches afterwards.
Actually had quite a nice tidy 4' tall hedge when we moved out the following year.
The birds in our garden are already looking for nest sites and exhibiting breading behaviour.
If they're breaded they'll be looking for a basket rather than a nest
Slight thread hijack but can anyone explain why my privet loses all its leaves every winter – or better still how to cure it? Basically all the leaves go yellow then black and then fall off in about mid November.
They're not strictly 'evergreen' but semi-evergreen. They can shed their leaves after a cold snap, and also shed them in the winter following a dry spell in the previous summer. Mine shed its leaves fairly early on last winter but this winter it held onto up them until a cold spell a week or two ago.
If they’re breaded they’ll be looking for a basket rather than a nest
👏