Hedge your bets

Bob explains how to renovate your hedge, from cutting it down to stumps to learning how to lay a hedge

- Bob Flowerdew

A ONCE-SUNNY plot can be turned into a shady stagnant box as the years pass and a hedge becomes overgrown. However, this may go unnoticed until the garden changes hands, and then the temptation to new hands is to have it ripped out and replaced by a fence.

Yet you can save the monetary cost and the ecological expense by renovating your hedge. The wonderful thing about hedges is that they are made (well, hopefully) from plants that will take regular hard cutting back and will grow again from old wood. Thus, you can cut down a hedge to short stubs, or even mere stumps, and almost guarantee that it will come back in spring with a profusion of new shoots. That’s assuming this is done in winter and the hedge is weeded, fed and watered well until it has regrown.