Quote:
Originally Posted by echinosum
That said, I have a number of hedges in my garden, and the one I find least trouble to maintain is the "laurel" hedge. ... But now it is of intended size, it is easy to keep it to size by regular clipping with electric hedgeclipping shears. ... The reason it is easy to prune is that the shoots are fairly soft to cut through, provided you keep at it, and don't miss a year.
I have more attractive sections of hedge, for example Virburnum tinus, and Forsythia, but they need hand pruning because the wood gets hard quickly.
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An interesting point.. I'd assumed there was an inverse relationship between growth rate and wood hardness,, ie a tree can either put it's effort into increasing density or to increasing length, it can't do both at the same time. Ash, for example, grows like the clappers, but 6ft shoots are still really soft and can be roughly chopped and put on the compost heap.