Evergreen Formal Hedges: An A-Mazing Garden Project
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2007
by Thomas Andrews
Park Seed Company
So you've decided to add a formal evergreen hedge in your garden. Maybe you want the crisp elegance of an English garden maze or a medieval labyrinth in your own back yard. Or maybe you just need just a thick wall of dense greenery to dampen the noises of obnoxious neighbors. Formal hedges and topiaries look like difficult projects—that’s why they’re so impressive! (And that’s really why you want them.) But is the work too much for you?
Creating the Design
If you are planning just a simple hedge outlining your property or edging a walkway, you probably don’t need to do much design work. But if you have your heart set on a real maze or labyrinth, grab some graph paper, measure your available space, and carefully plot your course. After all, it’s easier to erase a line on paper than to fill in a trench you’ve dug!
As you work on your layout, remember to take into account how wide your walkway needs to be. And be sure to consider the mature size of the evergreen shrubs.
With your design in mind, move outside with measuring tape, stakes, and string. Use the stakes and string to mark the straight lines where your plants will go. If you are planning any tricky angles, dust of your protractor from 5 th grade to line things up just right!
Preparing the Soil
Once you know where you will plant your hedge, your next step is to prepare the soil. To get the dense green growth typical of the traditional formal hedge, you need well-drained, nutrient-rich soil. Cultivate a trough about four feet wide and 18 inches deep. Generously mix in rich organic matter, like peat or a nice dark compost, if you have it. Because your hedge may be in place for decades, thoroughly amending the soil this way saves you much future work.
Choosing Evergreen Shrubs
Picking your plants is the next step. A few varieties lend themselves readily to the formal hedge, because they grow dense evergreen foliage from the ground up all year round. The most popular formal hedge shrub is the boxwood. Various varieties of boxwood have been used as formal hedges for centuries. You may also want to try varieties of thuja, holly, or cypress, depending on your climate. Buy plants that are no taller than 2 feet. Older, larger plants are more difficult to train into a hedge.
Training and Trimming Your Formal Hedge
If you have planted a fast-growing hedge of thujas or cypress, you can trim the hedge to the desired shape the very first year. If you are trying to achieve a thick boxwood hedge, just shape the sides. Allow the top to grow to the desired height. Trimming new growth will hinder the shrub. For a nice dense hedge, always shape your shrub to be a little wider at the bottom than at the top, allowing light to reach all of the visible leaves. After all this effort, you surely don’t want one of those weak hedges, with all of the bottom leaves fallen from lack of sunlight! After allowing your formal hedge to reach its desired height and shaping, your shrubs should only require light trimming a couple times a year.
And it's that simple—if you’ve got the space and the energy, you can have your very own evergreen formal hedge. The initial work of tilling the soil and establishing the hedge will be the most difficult part. After that, you can savour tea and biscuits on your patio, musing about cricket and exactly how many boxwoods it would take to turn your simple hedge into a complex labyrinth.
Thomas Andrews is a garden writer for Wayside Gardens.
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