Choosing A Hedge: Which One + Why

Hedging is one of the most versatile and cost-effective green materials you can use to carve up a garden.

MONEY WELL SPENT | Carving up the garden into outdoor rooms has been so popular over the past 20 years that some designers believe it’s time to retire the idea, but I think it still has value, especially for a small plot where a wide-open design has the potential to be anticlimactic. Garden rooms create opportunities for mysterious and surprising moments, and walls made of hedging material are the easiest, least expensive and most natural way to fashion these kinds of spaces.

Shape Shifters

One thing I love about hedges is their chameleon-like ability to look right in any style of garden whether traditional or contemporary; another is the way they provide the perfect, plain backdrop for other plants;  third is their shape-shifting capabilities—actually, I can’t think of more versatile plant material.

“Hedges are one of the glories of the garden,” Sir Roy Strong explained when he toured me around his garden in Herefordshire in England a few years back. While “The Laskett,” as Strong calls his garden, looks like an old arts and crafts extravaganza, it’s actually a contemporary plot full of grand, historical ideas executed on a modest budget using family relics and theatre props. The scheme hangs together because simple hedges, laid out in classic arts and crafts fashion, define formal rooms designed to pique curiosity and allow for surprise.

One of my favourite hedge masters is Dutch designer Jacques Wirtz, who uses the material in organic, sinuous ways that reflect the true contours of whatever landscape he’s developing. His hedges don’t just ring the periphery of a property but rather intersect and crisscross it at unexpected angles, sometimes creating waves of roiling green that are always the focal point.

Hedges With Benefits (Or Not)

Western Red Cedar
Pros: Dependable, widely available, quick growing, disease resistant. Cons: If you want a material that stands out, this one is indigenous so probably won’t. Quick growing is a minus when it comes to maintenance.

Yew
Pros: Small needles, luxurious deep green colour, a gorgeous foil for other plants. Slim and slow growing, can be trimmed to a manageable 18 inches deep. Cons: Less hardy than other hedge materials, generally loses shape and becomes susceptible to snow damage at eight to 10 feet in height. Not the most welcoming choice for already shady spaces.

Laurel
Pros: Bright, fresh leaves that reflect light; hardy and quick growing. Cons: Plant a laurel hedge, particularly an English variety, and you’re in for management problems; it grows too quickly—some planted in Vancouver in the 1950s are now 12 feet deep, swallowing up large portions of small lots. They can look clunky.

Deciduous Pyramidal Beech & Oak
Pros: Provide a semitransparent screen (planted root ball to root ball), can get 25 feet tall and require almost no pruning; allow in more light and air circulation for better plant growth; offer seasonal variety; branching provides some screening in winter. Cons: More transparency in winter.

Hedge Funds

If you don’t need immediate screening and can start with smaller specimens (three feet high or under), the prices for all of these hedge materials is similar. Over eight feet, costs rise considerably. Then there’s the cost of pruning. Obviously, slower growing materials require less pruning, and this saves time and/or money. —Ron Rule

Ron Rule is a well-known residential garden designer in Vancouver. He is the founder and head of the Certificate In Garden Design program at the University of B.C.

Photos, top to bottom: Ron Rule; Jake Hobson, Nikwaki; Ron Rule