Hi,

I've got good topsoil (6-12") on top of heavy clay (Sussex), reasonable
drainage. Having just chopped a 10' hawthorn hedge down to 3' for now[1],
I'm looking to start planting a new hedge between the hawthorn trunks and
take the hawthorn out when the new plants start to establish.

Are there likely to be any problems with my top 3 choices so far:

Box,
Yew,
Beech.

I might plant a hybrid hedge - I rather fancy crafting an arch in the coming
years over a pedestrian gate and I heard yew is good for that. Bit of beech
might make for some colour. May not bother with the box.

Any thoughts most welcome

Ta

Tim

[1] And spent 5 days and 5 gallons of petrol chipping 150ft lengths worth of
the b****rd stuff!!!

BTW I hate spiky plants...

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.

Tim Watts wrote:
Hi,

I've got good topsoil (6-12") on top of heavy clay (Sussex), reasonable
drainage. Having just chopped a 10' hawthorn hedge down to 3' for now[1],
I'm looking to start planting a new hedge between the hawthorn trunks and
take the hawthorn out when the new plants start to establish.

Are there likely to be any problems with my top 3 choices so far:

Box,

The prunings of box are an irritant after a short while fermenting.

Yew,

Yew is poisonous in all parts. Not a good choice on a field boundary.
Both of the above are rather slow growing.

Beech.

Nice appearance and the golden brown leaves stay on in the winter. It is
a slight martyr to whitefly in some years.

You should also consider cotoneaster (deciduous) but fairly dense.
Loicera nitida is fairly well behaved as a hedge.

I'd also have holly and pyracantha if I was starting from scratch, but
you say you don't like spiky things. I'd also be tempted to put crab
apple, rosa rugosa and blackthorn in as well.

I might plant a hybrid hedge - I rather fancy crafting an arch in the coming
years over a pedestrian gate and I heard yew is good for that. Bit of beech
might make for some colour. May not bother with the box.

Any thoughts most welcome

Chunks of the same plant for about 6-8 feet look good

BTW I hate spiky plants...

Pity there are some nice ones, and they are stock proof!

Regards,
Martin Brown

Janet Baraclough
wibbled on Tuesday 20 April 2010 15:35

The message
from Tim Watts contains these words:

Hi,

I've got good topsoil (6-12") on top of heavy clay (Sussex), reasonable
drainage. Having just chopped a 10' hawthorn hedge down to 3' for now[1],
I'm looking to start planting a new hedge between the hawthorn trunks and
take the hawthorn out when the new plants start to establish.

Are there likely to be any problems with my top 3 choices so far:

Box,
Yew,
Beech.

The soil will be filled, and drained dry of water and nutrients, by
the mature established root system of the hawthorns; no amount of
top-lopping
changes that. The stumps will very quickly re-sprout and (with
appropriate trimming) create a dense new hedge in a few years.

That competition will make it almost impossible to establish small
new hedge plants and make them grow.

Janet

OK - Point taken. But ignoring that, because there's not a lot I can do
about it[1], do any of the plants object to clay?

[1] OK - I could chop the hawthorn down now (3' is easy to handle now the
bulk is off) but it will take a while for the new plants to establish and
the hawthorn is actually quite gappy in places - I was going to start
there... Having a bit of a hedge in place for now isn't a bad thing.

I could also add slow acting fertiliser if necessary.

Cheers
Tim

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.

Martin Brown
wibbled on Tuesday 20 April 2010 16:05

Tim Watts wrote:
Hi,

I've got good topsoil (6-12") on top of heavy clay (Sussex), reasonable
drainage. Having just chopped a 10' hawthorn hedge down to 3' for now[1],
I'm looking to start planting a new hedge between the hawthorn trunks and
take the hawthorn out when the new plants start to establish.

Are there likely to be any problems with my top 3 choices so far:

Box,

The prunings of box are an irritant after a short while fermenting.

Hmm.

Yew,

Yew is poisonous in all parts. Not a good choice on a field boundary.
Both of the above are rather slow growing.

Just to clarify - this is a garden, not a field, so I don't anticipate
anything eating it. The kids are bright enough not to eat random things
(I've already lecturered then on mushrooms and berries).

Beech.

Nice appearance and the golden brown leaves stay on in the winter. It is
a slight martyr to whitefly in some years.

You should also consider cotoneaster (deciduous) but fairly dense.
Loicera nitida is fairly well behaved as a hedge.

Thanks - I'll check those out on the web shortly.

I'd also have holly and pyracantha if I was starting from scratch, but
you say you don't like spiky things. I'd also be tempted to put crab
apple, rosa rugosa and blackthorn in as well.

I have a blackthorn and a holly tree. The blackthorn is at least high enough
that it doesn't splat me in the face (or the pedestrians - I was getting
complaints via the Parish Council about my 10' hawthorn, having just taken
over the property - it had to come down, total pain to trim). I did keep
one bit of hawthorn at the other end that's also more of a tree - thought
they'd be a feature - one tree at each end of the hedge plus the
blackthorn.

Actually, I don't mind holly - it prickles but doesn't slash your skin to
bits. It's rose, hawthorn and blackthorn I find have objectionable spikes.


I might plant a hybrid hedge - I rather fancy crafting an arch in the
coming years over a pedestrian gate and I heard yew is good for that. Bit
of beech might make for some colour. May not bother with the box.

Any thoughts most welcome

Chunks of the same plant for about 6-8 feet look good

That sounds like a plan.

Thanks

Tim

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.

Martin
wibbled on Tuesday 20 April 2010 17:02

On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:24:59 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

The kids are bright enough not to eat random things
(I've already lecturered then on mushrooms and berries).

I lectured my kids on not eating fungi with the result that decades later
neither of them will eat anything with mushrooms in it.

My 4 year old is proud to tell me often: "You can't eat mushrooms, unless
you bought them or grew them yourself"...

Still won't eat mushrooms though!

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.

Janet Baraclough
wibbled on Tuesday 20 April 2010 19:43

The message
from Tim Watts contains these words:

Martin Brown
wibbled on Tuesday 20 April 2010 16:05

Yew is poisonous in all parts. Not a good choice on a field boundary.
Both of the above are rather slow growing.

Just to clarify - this is a garden, not a field, so I don't anticipate
anything eating it. The kids are bright enough not to eat random things

What's on the far side of the hedge? Do you own that land too?

Janet

A pavement. Not a great many sheep and the dogs are bright enough not to eat
yew ;-


--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.

Martin Brown wrote:
Tim Watts wrote:
Hi,

I've got good topsoil (6-12") on top of heavy clay (Sussex), reasonable
drainage. Having just chopped a 10' hawthorn hedge down to 3' for now[1],
I'm looking to start planting a new hedge between the hawthorn trunks and
take the hawthorn out when the new plants start to establish.

Are there likely to be any problems with my top 3 choices so far:

Box,

The prunings of box are an irritant after a short while fermenting.

Yew,

Yew is poisonous in all parts. Not a good choice on a field boundary.
Both of the above are rather slow growing.

Most parts - the flesh round the seeds is edible.

The seeds are deadly...

Beech.

Nice appearance and the golden brown leaves stay on in the winter. It is
a slight martyr to whitefly in some years.

Don't let the beech grow too high, or it *WILL* lose its leaves.

You should also consider cotoneaster (deciduous) but fairly dense.
Loicera nitida is fairly well behaved as a hedge.

I beg to differ. It's weak and bendy, and falls over of its own accord.
After you've put it up again, the wind will coe and play with it.

It's OK if it's supported with (say) hawthorn...

I'd also have holly and pyracantha if I was starting from scratch, but
you say you don't like spiky things. I'd also be tempted to put crab
apple, rosa rugosa and blackthorn in as well.

Pyracantha tends to sulk, and die, slowly. Having aid that, when I was
an anklebiter we had a short pyracanth hedge beside the conservatory,
and that only died when the extension was built where it had been.

Good for winter birds.

I might plant a hybrid hedge - I rather fancy crafting an arch in the
coming
years over a pedestrian gate and I heard yew is good for that. Bit of
beech
might make for some colour. May not bother with the box.

Any thoughts most welcome

Chunks of the same plant for about 6-8 feet look good

BTW I hate spiky plants...

Pity there are some nice ones, and they are stock proof!

And maybe more importantly, child and yoofproof. (Especially berberis of
many sorts.)

If you're anywhere near Norfolk and want to ignore my comments about it,
I can give you loads of rooted bits of Lonicera nitida.

The only use I'd have for it is rapid bonsai.

--
Rusty

Tim Watts wrote:
Martin Brown
wibbled on Tuesday 20 April 2010 16:05


Are there likely to be any problems with my top 3 choices so far:

Box,

The prunings of box are an irritant after a short while fermenting.

Hmm.

Yew,

Yew is poisonous in all parts. Not a good choice on a field boundary.
Both of the above are rather slow growing.

Just to clarify - this is a garden, not a field, so I don't anticipate
anything eating it. The kids are bright enough not to eat random things
(I've already lecturered then on mushrooms and berries).

Ah. Now I have been eating the most alarming-looking mushrooms since I
was ten or eleven, gradually widening my menu as books came into my
possession. I'm now seventy, and still living, though my gills are
drying-up - and as for my stalk...

Also, I'm a collector of berries - don't despise them.

However, get to know what you can eat, be sure of your identifications,
and then teach the kids what you've learnt. They'll develop (probably) a
healthy interest and it will serve them right^h^h^h^well.

So few people these days know what wild foods you can use, and if I
hadn't (and been a good shot) I could have starved or turned to crime
when the DWP took two and a half years thinking about paying me my
pension...

Mushrooms of many sorts, berries, fat hen and other chenopods, ground
elder, nettles, young hogweed shoots, what I grew in the garden, sloes,
bullaces, blackberre, black nightshade, pigeons, rabbits, (grey)
squirrels, and lots more, with a bit of gleaning after harvest.
Admittedly, I lost a lot of weight, but I don't think I took any harm
from it.

Most years I make a few pots of pie-filling from black nightshade
berries. (Solanum nigrum) I regularly eat a mushroom which most of the
books have as poisonous (Lactarius torminosus) which must be boiled 'at
a gallop' for ten minutes before preparing for frying, etc,

I'd recommend 'Food For Free' for the plants, and Roger Phillips'
Mushrooms and Other Fungi of Great Britain and Europe to begin with.

Beech.

Nice appearance and the golden brown leaves stay on in the winter. It is
a slight martyr to whitefly in some years.

You should also consider cotoneaster (deciduous) but fairly dense.
Loicera nitida is fairly well behaved as a hedge.

Thanks - I'll check those out on the web shortly.

I'd also have holly and pyracantha if I was starting from scratch, but
you say you don't like spiky things. I'd also be tempted to put crab
apple, rosa rugosa and blackthorn in as well.

I have a blackthorn and a holly tree. The blackthorn is at least high enough
that it doesn't splat me in the face (or the pedestrians - I was getting
complaints via the Parish Council about my 10' hawthorn, having just taken
over the property - it had to come down, total pain to trim). I did keep
one bit of hawthorn at the other end that's also more of a tree - thought
they'd be a feature - one tree at each end of the hedge plus the
blackthorn.

Wounds from blackthorn spines tend to fester and go septic - beware of
having any within reach of the general public.

Actually, I don't mind holly - it prickles but doesn't slash your skin to
bits. It's rose, hawthorn and blackthorn I find have objectionable spikes.

As an anklebiter at boarding school, the game in Dorm 22 was to leap out
of the window into the holly hedge below, and land on our backs - in our
pyjamas...

Dogood is a good hedge plant, and the red branches in the winter are
rather decorative, The berries are poisonous, though I've never heard of
them doing serious harm.

If ou do decide on some box, cuttings root very readily, aan you can
soon have enough to hide the Great Wall of China if you try hard enough.

--
Rusty

Martin wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:15:59 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Martin
wibbled on Tuesday 20 April 2010 17:02

On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:24:59 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

The kids are bright enough not to eat random things
(I've already lecturered then on mushrooms and berries).

I lectured my kids on not eating fungi with the result that decades later
neither of them will eat anything with mushrooms in it.
My 4 year old is proud to tell me often: "You can't eat mushrooms, unless
you bought them or grew them yourself"...

Still won't eat mushrooms though!

It's odd. My parents drummed into me not to eat fungi and berries, but it didn't
have the same effect on me when I was older.

I was actively encouraged to pick wild berries once I knew which ones
were good. We made jam (when we had enough (on the ration!) sugar. We
picked mushrooms in the fields round us, though I'm sure we must have
passed by plenty of perfectly good 'toadstools'.

I used to earn money in the autumn by picking carrier bags full of rose
hips from the hedgerows, and taking them to the local MoF office.
(Ministry of Food)

--
Rusty

Martin wrote:
The kids are bright enough not to eat random things
(I've already lecturered then on mushrooms and berries).
I lectured my kids on not eating fungi with the result that decades later
neither of them will eat anything with mushrooms in it.

I must admit, the lecturing I got on not eating fungi when I was little has
made me very suspicious of anything that isn't a shop bought very obvious
white or chestnut mushroom! I got brave a few years ago and bought some
Interesting Mushrooms from the food market in COvent Garden at Christmas,
but ... it just didn't seem right!

wibbled on Wednesday 21 April 2010 11:12

Martin wrote:
The kids are bright enough not to eat random things
(I've already lecturered then on mushrooms and berries).
I lectured my kids on not eating fungi with the result that decades later
neither of them will eat anything with mushrooms in it.

I must admit, the lecturing I got on not eating fungi when I was little
has made me very suspicious of anything that isn't a shop bought very
obvious
white or chestnut mushroom! I got brave a few years ago and bought some
Interesting Mushrooms from the food market in COvent Garden at Christmas,
but ... it just didn't seem right!

Berries are something I'm happy to teach my children about. Blackberries,
raspberries and strawberries are not confusable with anything nasty.

Round berries take more skill but are teachable - lots of clues, like being
able to recognise the tree by its leaf shape etc.

Mushrooms - I'll pass. There are too many where a deadly and non deadly
version look very similar with a lot less other clues to identify them.
Unless I was shown a few by a known expert, I'll be giving random mushroom
hunting a wide berth

I even have trouble identifying meadowsweet[1] on sight but I know the smell
of the flower well, because I was shown by someone else.

[1] Makes a smashing tea, with mild sedative effects.

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.

In article ,
says...
Janet Baraclough
wibbled on Tuesday 20 April 2010 15:35

The message
from Tim Watts contains these words:

Hi,

I've got good topsoil (6-12") on top of heavy clay (Sussex), reasonable
drainage. Having just chopped a 10' hawthorn hedge down to 3' for now[1],
I'm looking to start planting a new hedge between the hawthorn trunks and
take the hawthorn out when the new plants start to establish.

Are there likely to be any problems with my top 3 choices so far:

Box,
Yew,
Beech.

The soil will be filled, and drained dry of water and nutrients, by
the mature established root system of the hawthorns; no amount of
top-lopping
changes that. The stumps will very quickly re-sprout and (with
appropriate trimming) create a dense new hedge in a few years.

That competition will make it almost impossible to establish small
new hedge plants and make them grow.

Janet

OK - Point taken. But ignoring that, because there's not a lot I can do
about it[1], do any of the plants object to clay?

[1] OK - I could chop the hawthorn down now (3' is easy to handle now the
bulk is off) but it will take a while for the new plants to establish and
the hawthorn is actually quite gappy in places - I was going to start
there... Having a bit of a hedge in place for now isn't a bad thing.

I could also add slow acting fertiliser if necessary.

Cheers
Tim


Probably a bit late into this thread but I would cross box off the list
as if you get Box blight it defoliates them and it looks awfull!
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea

Charlie Pridham
wibbled on Wednesday 21 April 2010 12:40


Probably a bit late into this thread but I would cross box off the list
as if you get Box blight it defoliates them and it looks awfull!

Not at all late

OK - didn't know that - Box is off. Bit slow growing anyway (I'd like a
hedge in less than 10 years starting with tiny cheap saplings).

Thanks!

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.

Tim Watts wrote:
Charlie Pridham
wibbled on Wednesday 21 April 2010 12:40

Probably a bit late into this thread but I would cross box off the list
as if you get Box blight it defoliates them and it looks awfull!

Not at all late

OK - didn't know that - Box is off. Bit slow growing anyway (I'd like a
hedge in less than 10 years starting with tiny cheap saplings).

IME box isn't that slow-growing.

--
Rusty

Janet Baraclough
wibbled on Wednesday 21 April 2010 16:44

The message
from Tim Watts contains these words:


It's a matter of taste but I don't think yew and hawthorn look good
together; their growth habits are incompatible and anyway I don't
think yews will thrive with that amount of competition.

Good point. It is my intention to remove the hawthorn completely in stages,
but as I don't have time this year for such an ambitious project, I thought
I should at least start a new hedge growing in the gaps.

As for the hawthorn, I hate handling the stuff. Cutting 7' off has destroyed
a pair of heavy welding gauntlets. I only allow roses if growing back
against a fence - any that "get in my face" get the chop too. I like soft
and fluffy plants Luckily the garden comes with lots of nice "meadow"
flowers, rhododendron, rosemary, pussy willow and lots of random bushes
that look cute. Not many places left for weeds, which is how I like it.
Lawn and bushes - that's me.

If I really had to fill in gaps I'd follow nature's example and use
very small plants of plain green holly, which is one of the few
evergreens/hedgeable plants that will self -seed into the dry shade of
an established hedge

Despite the above, Holly is the only spiky plant I don't mind, because the
prickles are very short and don't tend to get past leather. I could allow
the exist holly to establish a bit - I have one tree and a couple of small
self seeded plants.

I would get small, bare root stock, grown in open ground, from a
forestry nursery supplier (too late for this year) because any
pot-grown fill ins will struggle to ever extend their roots beyond their
own pot-shaped
planting medium. The roots will go round and round , a recipe for failure.

OK - that's interesting to know. Probably a next year project now anyway.

Failing that, if you know anyone with a big fruiting holly in their
garden they probably have scores of tiny seedlings all over the place.

That's me - though I only have a couple of seedlings - mostly because the
garden was so overgrown. It's pretty clear now - just moved the grass,
raked out some broken glass by the site of a previous greenhouse and
de-twigged the lawn. Much better

Holly makes a superb hedge

Janet

Thanks for the comments Janet

Cheers

Tim

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.