Hedge Maintenance
At Benefitz Gardening, we are Bournemouth-based experts in hedge maintenance, having worked on customers’ hedges across Dorset for more than a decade. Trimming, pruning, and maintaining your hedge regularly will keep it looking at its best. For help with Hedge Maintenance, please get in touch with us today.
We have included a 7-step guide to Hedge Maintenance to help you get the best possible results for your garden.
Our 7-step Guide to Hedge Maintenance
1. Keep your hedge thick, dense, and styled
Growing your hedge so it is thick and dense will enable your hedge branches to become interwoven, providing a safe nesting and roosting place for small birds like hedge sparrows, wrens, and robins. Light trimming throughout the year to remove a couple of inches of growth and style your hedge is fine but try to avoid anything heavier than this. Patchy, open hedges can be vulnerable to larger birds nesting such as magpies, crows, and pigeons. To make your hedge as compact as possible, consider hedging plants such as holly to help form a compact, dense bush.
2. Cut at the right time
It’s important to get the timing right when it comes to trimming your hedge. Ideally, you want to avoid cutting during the bird breeding season (March to August) as this could cause disruption. The best time to cut is late winter when hedgerow berries are sparse. Cutting your hedge at the wrong time will mean there may be less berries available for birds and other wildlife.
3. Avoid cutting too often or too tight
The best hedge trimming frequency is about once a year so the hedge is allowed to grow outwards and upwards. More established hedges can be trimmed more often than this to maintain a neat appearance, but the key here is to keep the hedge thick, rather than bare.
4. Encourage flowers and grasses at the base
Growing vegetation at the base of your hedge will help to support lots of wildlife. Flowers such as primroses provide nectar and pollen for bees and other beneficial invertebrates, while tussock grass provides a dense and safe place for insects and animals such as hedgehogs during the winter, making your garden a popular spot for nature.
5. Rejuvenating your hedge
With the correct approach and trimming frequency, hedges can be kept dense and bushy for years. However, all hedges eventually become open and vulnerable at the base. When this happens, they need to be cut down close to ground level so they can send up a crop of new stems and begin a fresh cycle of healthy growth.
6. Carefully select a suitable species of plant
Fast-growing plants are often used to quickly establish a hedge at a property boundary instead of a fence or wall. This can produce a hedge that becomes too difficult to maintain due to its excessive height or width. This can lead to property disputes. You should always seriously consider why a hedge is the best solution and, if it is, select the right species of plant for the space.
7. Monitor your hedge
It’s worth monitoring your hedge over the months and years so you learn about what wildlife lives in it. These learnings will enable you to decide how you want to manage and maintain your hedge in the future. A fun thing to do with family members could be to keep a record of the species you see in your hedge.
Want some help with your Hedge Maintenance?
We’re experts in hedge maintenance and maintain hedges across the whole of Dorset, so we’d love to help you.
Request a quote today to find out how we can help you with your hedge maintenance.