Aries writes
On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:24:01 +0000, Rusty Hinge wrote:

Aries wrote:

A question Charlie - wouldn't cutting such tall leylandii down that much
kill it off altogether? I ask that question as we too have a very tall
leylandii hedge running around part of our property and I hate it - makes me
feel rather claustrophobic

I know my name's not Charlie, but there's a lad called Charlie down the
road, so I'll answer on his behalf.

Cut off all the grennery from most, if not all coniferous trees will
kill them. Generally if not always, conifers only grow from the bits
with foliage. The only exception I can think of offhand is yew, which
technically, is a conifer,

The Leylandii hedge we have here is around 12 feet tall in places and
there's a lot of it going around one side and the end of our garden. I
would love to either cut it down to say 6 feet or take it out altogether and
plant evergreen shrubs in their place. Let me confirm what you're saying -
if we cut them down by half will that kill them altogether ?

No, because you'd still have lots of green growth. It would grow new
leaders, and would continue getting fatter.

We have a row of 3.5 hiding the barn-like 1950s church next door, and
when they reached the height that we could no longer see the roof, we
took them down to a height just above the gutter. They're now back up to
concealing-whole-roof mode, and extend another 18inches into the garden
(doesn't matter because it's sheltering our log store).

Meanwhile, the Church has a circle of 6 surrounding their war memorial,
and reduced them by half, and they now look rather like lollipops. But
while they've got theirs on our boundary they can't grumble about ours
on their boundary ;-)

If you want to kill, you need to cut back beyond the green growth - eg
cut down to 6 foot and take all the branches off back tot he trunk as
Sasha suggests, then string some chains between and grow some climbers.
--
Kay