hello all

new member saying hello and needing a little bit of advice.

want to plant a hedge, approx 50 foot long, i want it to be approx 5 foot tall.

has anyone experience of Thuja plicata Atrovirens (western red cedar)?

if i planted a hedge of 3 foot tall plants would i be able to keep them trimmed to approx 5 foot without killing them. i was going to plant some holy or other plant in amongst them.i thought about erecting a fence but thought a hedge would be better for wildlife.

how wide would they grow?

i also need a couple of trees to hide our neighbours garage, the local council have given him permission to errect a garage, no problem with that but hes gone and bought a second hand concrete sectional one. it looks terrible.

anyway i have been advised to plant a couple of conifers columnarius is their name.

has anyone experience of these.

any help and advice is much appreciated,

Really you need to let the hedge grow to at least to 6ft. Any less than that would not do them much good. I wouldn't bother with the holly. the thuja is quite fast growing and will probably kill it.
I am not sure which tall conifers you are referring to. There are several different species called ........ columnar so without more info not much help.

It is unlikely that a hedge of fronded non-native conifers will be much good for wild-life. Won't be anything for them to eat there, though the occasional small bird might make a nest in it. The dead material that falls from it does not rot down easily, and so tends to smother other stuff, and does not encourage invertibrates that birds would use as food. Being shallow-rooted, it sucks water out of the ground and makes it difficult to grow anything else close to it. If you want a hedge for wild-life, you want one with tasty berries, leaves that fall and compost naturally and encourage good bugs.

Western Red Cedar are (one of) the enormous trees you see in British Colombia. It will become a huge tree if you fail to prune it. The prunings do not compost well, and can be irritating to the skin/eyes. Whilst not as fast growing as Leyland Cypress, it is the kind of thing that can make your neighbour hate you if you let it get out of control.

There is a wide range of evergreen shrubs that are much nicer.