Kay wrote:

In article , Martin Brown |||newspam|
writes

Kay wrote:

Fast growing and thorny is a double edged sword. You have to keep on top
of pruning it or else!

And you have to make sure you collect all the prunings and not leave any
lying on the lawn or lurking amongst your flowers. But the OP did want
security ;-)

You always miss a bit. And pyracantha goes through even the thinkest
gloves if you get hold of the wrong bit.


Lots of other hedging plants with berries and
with/without thorns exist with variable growth rates.

Hawthorn and blackthorne do look a bit bare in midwinter (ie now).

Blackthorn, yes, but hawthorn is so densely twiggy that, although it is
leafless, it is dense enough not to look bare. Personally, I prefer the
look of the dense mass of hawthorn twigs to the dead leaves that persist
through winter on beech, but that's just a personal opinion - others, I
know, feel differently.

I like my beech hedge. I don't like it so much when the leaves
eventually drop off and clog the drains but it does have a nice range f
colours from copper brown in winter to acid green in early spring with
mature leaves a nice midgreen. I just hope it doesn't get plagues of
whitefly next year...

How keen are the birds on cotoneaster? All our native berries -
whitebeam, rowan, rose hips, holly, elderberry - are long since gone,
but our birds are yet to start on the pyracantha, viburnum will be later
than that, and Cotoneaster (the nasty little horizontal thing), skimmia
and pernettya will probably remain untouched.

The birds round here will eat anything. A few windfall apples are still
left, but all the red berries in my garden are long gone. Eventually
they will eat most orange, purple and yellow berries too. And a
birdfeeder full of nuts every couple of days when I remember to fill it.

Regards,
Martin Brown