What do I do with all the hedge clippings?

A single hedge cut can produce more volume than everything else the garden generates in a year, and most of it is either wasted or dealt with badly. Almost all of it has a use on site if you separate the soft from the woody, and the couple of categories that genuinely must leave the garden are worth knowing precisely, because getting those wrong carries legal consequences rather than just horticultural ones.

What you'll need

• A tarpaulin or old sheet
• A shredder (optional)
• Compost bin or heap (optional)
• Stakes for a dead hedge (optional)

Step by step

1. Cut onto a sheet.A tarpaulin or old bedsheet laid along the hedge base turns two hours of raking into two minutes of dragging, and stops clippings smothering the plants underneath.
2. Separate soft green from woody.Leafy shoots under about pencil thickness compost readily. Anything thicker needs shredding, chipping or a different destination. Mixing them is why so many compost heaps contain recognisable twigs years later.
3. Compost the soft material with plenty of brown.Fresh hedge clippings are high in nitrogen and mat down into a slimy anaerobic layer on their own. Mix roughly equal volumes with cardboard, dry leaves or straw, and turn it.
4. Shred or chip the woody material.Chipped material makes an excellent mulch for paths, shrub borders and around trees, and it composts in a year rather than five. Hiring a chipper for a day after a big cut is usually worth it.
5. Be careful with conifer and laurel.Conifer clippings are slow to break down and slightly acidifying, so use them as a path mulch or take them to green waste rather than putting large volumes on a compost heap. Cherry laurel foliage releases small amounts of cyanide compounds as it wilts, so do not shred it in an enclosed space, do not let livestock or pets eat it, and let chipped laurel weather outdoors before use.
6. Build a dead hedge with the brushy material.Two rows of stakes about 600mm apart, with brush packed between them. It is free, it disappears the material permanently as it slowly rots, it makes a superb wildlife habitat, and it screens a compost area. This is the best answer for anyone with room.
7. Use green waste collection for the rest.Council green bins and household waste recycling centres take hedge clippings. Check what your authority allows in the bin — many exclude large woody material — and check whether the tip requires a booking.
8. Never compost or bin invasive species.Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, Himalayan balsam and a few others are controlled waste. They must not go in a compost heap, a green bin, or on a bonfire in most circumstances, and must not be spread in the wild — which includes dumping them in a wood or a lay-by. They go to a licensed facility, and specialist contractors handle large amounts.
9. Never fly-tip, including over your own back fence.Tipping garden waste on verges, in woodland or on someone else's land is an offence carrying substantial fines, and 'it is only green waste' is not a defence. Dumping clippings over a boundary into a neighbour's garden has been treated the same way.
10. Think twice about burning.Bonfires of green material smoulder and smoke heavily, and persistent smoke affecting neighbours can be a statutory nuisance. Some areas have restrictions. Green waste is almost always better composted or chipped than burned, and never burn a pile that has stood long enough for a hedgehog to move into it.

Tips

• Chipped conifer makes a very good weed-suppressing path surface where you do not want it near vegetables.
• Wilted hedge clippings lose about half their bulk in a week. Piling them and waiting before the tip run saves a journey.
• A dead hedge along a back boundary is the single best thing most gardens can do with hedge waste — free disposal, free habitat and free screening in one.

Common mistakes

• Putting whole woody prunings in a compost bin — They will not break down at the temperature or timescale of a domestic heap, and they make the finished compost unusable without sieving.
• Composting or binning knotweed — It spreads from tiny fragments, and it is controlled waste. Doing this can turn a contained problem into an offence and a much larger and more expensive one.
• Burning a heap that has sat for weeks — Hedgehogs, toads and slow-worms move into brush piles very quickly. Always move a pile onto fresh ground immediately before lighting it, if you must burn at all.
• Tipping clippings into the woodland behind the garden — It is fly-tipping, and dumping garden waste in wild places is also how invasive garden plants escape into the countryside.

Questions people ask