Which hedge should I plant for privacy?

The question is usually asked as 'what grows fastest', and that is the wrong question, because growth rate is a maintenance liability rather than a feature. A hedge that reaches 2m in three years will keep growing at that rate for the next thirty, and every metre of it has to be cut, twice a year, by someone, forever. The right question is what gives the required screen for the least ongoing work.

Step by step

1. Decide how high you actually need it.Screening a seated area needs less than screening an upstairs window. Measure the sightline from where you actually sit rather than defaulting to 'as tall as possible'.
2. Decide whether you need winter cover.Evergreen gives a screen all year. Beech and hornbeam are deciduous but hold their dead brown leaves through winter when kept clipped, which screens surprisingly well and looks better than most evergreens.
3. Work out how much cutting you will really do.Be honest. A hedge needing two cuts a year at 3m tall is a day's work each time plus disposal. If that will not happen, choose a slower species, however tempting the fast one looks in year two.
4. Check the aspect and the soil.Yew needs drainage and will not tolerate waterlogging. Beech dislikes heavy wet clay; hornbeam handles it. Laurel is unfussy. Box is now compromised by blight and box tree caterpillar in much of the country.
5. Think about width, not just height.Every hedge occupies ground. Yew and hornbeam can be kept at 600mm wide; laurel and leylandii want a metre or more. In a small garden that difference is a significant part of the plot.
6. Consider a fence with planting instead.For instant privacy in a small garden, a 1.8m fence with climbers or a narrow row of trained trees does the job immediately and takes 300mm rather than a metre. Hedges win on wildlife, wind filtering and appearance; fences win on speed and footprint.
7. Check the height rules before planning something tall.There is no permission needed to plant a hedge, but a neighbour can complain to the council about an evergreen or semi-evergreen hedge over 2m that unreasonably blocks light. Planning a 4m screen invites that.
8. Think about wildlife value.A mixed native hedge supports far more insects, birds and mammals than any single-species evergreen, and hawthorn and holly in the mix give a genuinely impenetrable barrier as well.

Tips

• Yew's reputation for slowness is overstated. It puts on 200 to 300mm a year in decent soil and needs a single annual cut, which over twenty years is far less work than any conifer.
• Do not plant box for a new hedge in most of the UK now. Box blight and box tree caterpillar have made it a high-maintenance gamble; Ilex crenata or Euonymus are the usual substitutes.
• Whatever you choose, plant it fully within your own boundary with room to walk round both sides.

Alternatives

• Yew: The best formal hedge in Britain. Dense, dark, evergreen, tolerates hard renovation because it reshoots from old wood, needs only one cut a year once established, and can be kept narrow. Slower to establish but 200 to 300mm a year is not slow. Needs good drainage. All parts are toxic, which matters where livestock or grazing animals are next door.
• Hornbeam: Deciduous but retains dead brown leaves through winter when clipped. Handles heavy and wet soils that beech will not, tolerates one cut a year in August, and can be kept narrow. The best all-round choice on clay.
• Beech: As hornbeam, with a slightly warmer winter leaf colour, but it wants free-draining soil and sulks on wet clay. Beautiful in spring.
• Cherry laurel: Fast, cheap, evergreen, tolerant of shade and poor soil, and regenerates from old wood. But it is bulky, needs two cuts a year, and looks mutilated if cut with a trimmer rather than secateurs. Berries and leaves are toxic to people and pets.
• Portuguese laurel: Smaller-leaved, neater and more refined than cherry laurel, tolerates clipping better, and is a much better choice for a formal evergreen hedge in a garden of any quality.
• Privet: Cheap, fast, semi-evergreen, tolerant of pollution and shade. Needs three cuts a year to look good and is a greedy feeder that impoverishes the ground beside it.
• Leylandii and other conifers: Fastest and cheapest to a screen, and the source of most hedge disputes in the country. Will not regenerate from brown wood, so a lapsed leylandii can never be brought back. Only choose it if two cuts a year, forever, is genuinely realistic.
• Mixed native hedge: Hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, field maple, dog rose, holly. Cheapest of all as bare-root whips, best for wildlife, thorny and stock-proof, informal in appearance, one cut a year in late winter. Not a formal or a year-round screen.

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