echinosum writes
K;797874 Wrote:
echinosum writes-I know it's
boring, but I would recommend laurel (ie evergreen prunus spp) to
provide easy rapid screening without leyland problems. The
reason it is better than leyland is that if you let it grow too much
you can cut it back hard as you like and it will come back (unlike
leyland where if you cut back to the brown it never comes green
again).
Also you can get flowering forms.-
Does this imply that there are non-flowering forms? I'd always assumed
that the reason you don't get flowers on a laurel hedge is that you
keep
cutting it back.
--
When I bought my house, the laurel hedge was not being pruned (it was
more than 2m thick), but there was no evidence of flowering: it took me
8 months to close the deal, and it was some time before I addressed it,
so I had a whole season to observe it. I've seen some other people's
pruned/shaped laurel hedges in flower. So I think that there are some
that never flower, some that always flower, and some that only flower
if you don't prune them. Both P. lusitanica and P. laurocerasus are
used for hedging, and I think the latter is the strong flowerer. Also
there are many cultivars of the latter, and maybe some are sterile.
That all makes sense. I wonder if there is also a light requirement?
Think of my various laurels (P laurocerasus) - the one I pruned to -1/2
inch is now about 6ft high and 3ft dia, pruned heavily a couple of times
a year and never flowers. The other is huge, but all the flowers are at
the top where they get plenty of light - no flowers below 8 ft.
The one I grew up with (it was my tree-house from when I was quite
small) was also a tree, and never pruned, and, thinking back, all the
flowers were on the upper side, with nothing between them and the sky.
--
Kay