Ruud Kleinpaste: Establishing a neat and tidy hedge

Hedge-establishment.
Many species you can choose from and now is a great time to plant them.
Many folk think of box hedges (Buxus) but to be honest, that may be a bit tricky these days, as a couple of blight species came into Aotearoa and they are really hard to control – especially in North Island.
How high do you want the hedge to become? Some species are best kept at 80 cm to a meter; small Corokias, Choisya ternate you can find heaps of stuff on-line. Taller specimens: Pittosporum, lilly pilly, even totara and beech! In Canterbury there’s always appetite for hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)
Choices can be found on-line – but here’s the best tip for you: go for a walk around the block and see what grows in your neighbourhood and what looks good. (knock on the door to ask if they know the name of the hedge (score a cutting or two!!..)
Or visit the AKL, WLG and CHC and Dunedin Botanic Gardens; Most of them have some displays of hedge species that work well (AKL used to have a fabulous series of “demonstration hedges”)
Think about: native or exotic; flowering at some time of the year (Choisya, Escallonia)? Provider of nectar for pollinators and parasitic wasps? Good nesting sites for birds? Fruit? Feijoa, apple, pear! Easy to maintain – twice-a-year clip?
How to establish a hedge:
Plant them at 0.75 to 1.00 meters apart depending on species
1) When they are planted, clip them a few weeks later, when they are still very young – don’t worry about the fact they still have to grow a lot taller!!! By frequent clipping (a little bit each time) you cut of the apical buds of the twiglets, which makes the plants become a lot more bushy! They’ll be denser full of foliage when they get older.
2) I usually give them their first hard clip in mid-spring; Once again: don’t worry if they still need to grow – they’ll get there in a few years! (but at least they’ll be bushy and dense)
3) When they have reached their final height, look for the main vertical “trunk” or “stem” (we call that the Central Leader. Cut this central leader at the required height, so there won’t be much more sturdy growth coming from that leader, just softer, shorter growth from the millions of side-shoots you made grow.
4) Try to start shaping the hedge as follows: the bottom part should be wider than the top part; this ensures that sunlight will still reach the bottom branches, keeping the whole hedge nice and green
5) from now on it’s a matter of keeping on top of the re-growth by clipping twice or perhaps three times a year: spring, mid-summer and autumn.
6) keep an eye out for scale insects – I have noticed that they are often un-detected and thrive somewhere in the middle of the hedge… sooty mould and honeydew are the give-aways of their presence; a number of repeated sprays (two weeks apart in the warmer months of the year – the growing season) with conqueror oil, mixed with some Mavrik will keep them under control.
Oh and when you’re getting good and “controlling” hedges, try to do some weird forms: hedges elegantly moving up and down in free-form… a kind of continuous topiary.