Blog: Making the backbone plants of your garden shine again
If you have large, old and ignored plants in your garden, consider renovating hedges and shrubs to give them a new lease of life.
It’s one of the best things you can do for general garden health. Old shrubs become congested with dead wood, leading to problems like coral spot. Many people may take on an old, overgrown garden when they move house, despair at the dull shrubs and hire someone to remove the lot. Unless the plants are dead or diseased, renovation is a great option.
Before renovating hedges and shrubs, do remember that deciduous shrubs and trees are dormant now, so you won’t get a full picture of how they perform. You can read more here about renovating hedges in detail and the demise of the old Berberis darwinii in my garden.
Renovating hedges
My garden’s boundary is mostly a beech/hawthorn hedge, planted in the 1960s. It’s double-layered, so very thick and a wonderful resource for wildlife. We live on an exposed, windy corner, which a fence couldn’t cope with – hedges filter the wind.
The beech hangs on to most of its brown leaves in winter (hence the term ‘everbrown’). The mixture with hawthorn means it’s intruder-proof and allows dappled light to penetrate during winter, giving spring bulbs a good start.
The main problem is its height (between 2.5m and 4m on the outside) as it’s on a sloping site. My other half does the May cut outside, and we get in a gardener to do the late summer shaping cut. I’m not allowed to use power tools (epilepsy and joint problems), which is no good!
Cutting hedges by hand
However, once every few years, the inside needs a renovation cut. Because I’m a sucker for punishment, I do this by hand in January/February. It’s been eight years since the last big hack-back, and it was very overdue.
This time of year is best for a deciduous hedge as it is dormant. Leave it to mid-spring for evergreens. I can get into the back of the border without damaging other plants or stepping on newly emerging bulbs. It means I can cut around shrubs that have grown into the hedge neatly.
You can take one side and the top of a hedge back by 50 per cent. My cut is not as much, removing overgrown branches at the top (up to 1m). About 75cm-1m is being taken off the inside, tapering the cut so the base is wider than the top. It really is a war of attrition, doing little and often. Apart from looking a lot neater, the garden has really opened up. Feed the hedge with general fertiliser and water so it recovers well.
Renovating shrubs
When it comes to renovating hedges and shrubs, the garden’s ‘backbone’ plants (Weigela, Viburnum, Eucalyptus, Fatsia, etc) can easily become overgrown.
There are several ways of sprucing them up. One is by crown lifting, which raises (or creates) a trunk, opening up the ground for underplanting and giving the plant a more tree-like silhouette. I’ve done this with a Fatsia japonica, plum, elderberry and a multi-stemmed Weigela variegata Florida.
Other shrubs (mostly deciduous) respond well by being hacked right back. Cut stems to 10-20cm from the ground for the most drastic approach. If you want to keep a framework of branches low down, cut these 20-45cm from the main stems. Feed, mulch and water well. Shrubs that respond well to this treatment include Berberis, Cotinus (smoke bush), Deutzia, Cornus (dogwood), Eucalyptus, Fuchsia, hazel, Philadelphus, Spiraea, and willow.
The hedge (thank God) is nearly finished, and I’ve gained almost a metre in the path by the black pots. Part of this restoration has involved tying in and revamping the rambling rose. The problem? Now I have an Echium bang in the middle of that space!
