How to identify your hedge species
Twelve species account for almost every garden boundary in Kent. Knowing which one you own decides when it is cut, how often, and how far back it can safely be taken.
The first question on every quotation
Before height, before length, before access, we want to know what the hedge is. Everything else in the job follows from the answer.
Species sets the cutting frequency. A yew hedge is content with one cut a year. Leylandii needs two or three to hold the same outline, because it puts on sixty to ninety centimetres a year where yew manages twenty. Species sets the month, too: beech is cut in August, box in late May and again in August, conifers while they are still in growth and can heal.
Above all, species sets the limit. Some hedges can be cut back into bare old wood and will furnish over within two or three seasons. Others will never produce a single new shoot from that wood, and the cut you take today is the shape of the hedge for the rest of its life. That single distinction is the most valuable thing on this page.
Three tests, in this order
You do not need a botanical key. Almost every hedge in the county can be named in under a minute by working through these four checks in sequence.
- Needle, scale or leafFlat needles arranged in two ranks either side of the twig means yew. Tiny overlapping scales pressed flat to the shoot, forming sprays rather than needles, means one of the cypress family. Anything with a recognisable broad leaf is a broadleaf hedge and belongs in the second table below.
- Crush a handful and smell itThe single most useful test on a conifer. Sweet and fruity is western red cedar. Sharp and parsley-like is Lawson cypress. Almost nothing at all is leylandii. On broadleaves, crushed cherry laurel smells clearly of marzipan or almonds, and crushed box has a musty scent nobody forgets.
- Look at leaf arrangementLeaves in opposite pairs at each point on the stem narrows you to privet, box or escallonia. Leaves alternating up the stem points to laurel, beech, hornbeam, hawthorn or holly.
- Look at the hedge in FebruaryAn evergreen still fully green in midwinter is conifer, yew, box, privet, laurel, holly, griselinia or escallonia. A hedge holding dry russet-brown dead leaves is beech or hornbeam. A hedge of bare thorny twigs is hawthorn or blackthorn.
The conifers
The commonest hedges in postwar Kent, and the least forgiving. Four species, and the difference between them is the difference between a hedge that can be rescued and one that cannot.
Leylandii (x Cuprocyparis leylandii)
Dull mid to dark green scale foliage in flattened sprays held at irregular angles, so the hedge face reads slightly shaggy rather than neatly planar. Almost no scent when crushed. Cones, if any, are small and rounded, under a centimetre, and often absent altogether. Growth of sixty to ninety centimetres a year in good Kent soil, which is why so many were planted and why so many were regretted.
Reshoots from old wood: no. Cut into brown wood and the brown stays. Every reduction is limited to the depth of the green shell, which on a neglected hedge may be only fifteen centimetres.
Western red cedar (Thuja plicata)
Glossier and a richer green than leylandii, with sprays held in genuinely flat planes. Crushed foliage is strongly sweet, commonly likened to pineapple. Turn a spray over and the underside shows pale whitish markings shaped like a butterfly or a stretched letter X. Slightly slower than leylandii and noticeably better tempered.
Reshoots from old wood: partially. It will push some new growth from older wood where light reaches it, but slowly and unevenly. Worth trying on a neglected hedge, never worth relying on.
Lawson cypress (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana)
Finer, softer foliage than either of the above, in drooping sprays, with the leading shoot of each stem characteristically nodding over rather than standing upright. Crushed foliage smells sharply of parsley. Small round cones about eight millimetres across, often plentiful. Many garden forms exist in blue, grey and gold, so colour is no guide.
Reshoots from old wood: no. Treat it with the same caution as leylandii.
Yew (Taxus baccata)
Not scale foliage at all. Flat, soft, dark green needles about two to three centimetres long, paler beneath, set in two ranks either side of the twig. No cones. Female plants carry soft red berry-like arils in autumn. Dense, very dark, and slow at around twenty to thirty centimetres a year. Common in older Kent gardens, churchyards and estate boundaries.
Reshoots from old wood: yes, freely, and almost uniquely among conifers. A yew hedge cut back to bare stems will furnish again over two or three seasons. All parts are toxic to people, dogs and horses, so clippings must leave the site.
The broadleaf hedges
More forgiving, more varied, and where most of the identification errors happen. Beech is mistaken for hornbeam, cherry laurel for Portuguese laurel, and privet for almost anything.
Beech (Fagus sylvatica)
Alternate oval leaves five to ten centimetres long, the margin smooth or gently wavy and never toothed, with a silky fringe of hairs on young leaves. Buds are long, slender, sharply pointed and stand out from the stem at an angle. Kept as a hedge it is marcescent: the leaves die in autumn but hang on, copper brown, until the new growth pushes them off in April. Prefers the free-draining chalk of the downs to heavy ground.
Reshoots from old wood: yes, but slowly and reluctantly. Hard renovation is done one face at a time over successive winters.
Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)
The lookalike. Same size, same colour, same winter russet, but the leaf margin is clearly toothed like a saw blade and the veins are pleated so the leaf looks corrugated. Buds are shorter and pressed close against the stem. Hornbeam tolerates the heavy wet clay of the Weald where beech sulks, so on low-lying Kent ground a brown winter hedge is more often hornbeam than people assume.
Reshoots from old wood: yes, and rather more willingly than beech.
Cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus)
Large, thick, glossy evergreen leaves, ten to twenty centimetres long, alternate on stout green stems. Crushed or cut foliage smells distinctly of marzipan, which is hydrogen cyanide and the reason the leaves are toxic to livestock. Vigorous, coarse, and the reason so many laurel hedges look ragged: a powered trimmer chops the big leaves in half and the cut edges brown within a week.
Reshoots from old wood: yes, strongly. A laurel cut to knee height will come back. It is one of the easiest hedges to renovate and one of the hardest to keep looking neat.
Portuguese laurel (Prunus lusitanica)
Frequently confused with the above, and much the better hedge. Leaves are smaller, around six to twelve centimetres, darker, and carried on distinctly red leaf stalks and young stems, which is the giveaway from three paces. Denser, slower and far tidier under the trimmer because the smaller leaf takes a cut without looking mutilated.
Reshoots from old wood: yes. It also takes a formal clipped finish, which cherry laurel never really does.
Privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium)
Small oval leaves three to six centimetres long in opposite pairs, mid green and semi-glossy, on slender twiggy stems. Semi-evergreen: it holds most of its leaf through a mild Kent winter and drops much of it after a hard one. Left uncut it carries heads of cream flowers in July with a heavy scent, followed by black berries. The default suburban hedge of the interwar years and still everywhere in the Medway towns.
Reshoots from old wood: yes, extremely readily. Privet is almost impossible to kill by cutting, which is its great virtue and the reason it needs two or three cuts a year.
Box (Buxus sempervirens)
Small paired oval leaves one and a half to two and a half centimetres long, glossy dark green above, matt beneath, usually with a slight notch at the tip. Very dense, very slow, and almost always used for low formal hedging and parterres rather than boundaries. The crushed foliage has a musty scent that is unmistakable once learned.
Reshoots from old wood: yes. But check any box in Kent for box blight, which shows as bare patches with black streaking on the stems, and for box tree caterpillar, which webs the foliage and strips it. Both are established across the south east.
Hawthorn and blackthorn (Crataegus monogyna, Prunus spinosa)
The Kent field boundary. Hawthorn has deeply lobed leaves, thorns growing from the leaf axils, white blossom in May and clusters of red haws in autumn. Blackthorn flowers white on bare black wood in March before any leaf appears, carries longer and far more vicious spines, and fruits as sloes. Both are deciduous and both are usually found mixed in an old laid hedge.
Reshoots from old wood: yes, vigorously. These are the species traditional hedge laying was invented for.
Griselinia and escallonia
The coastal hedges, common at Thanet, Deal, Whitstable and along the Folkestone seafront where salt wind kills everything else. Griselinia littoralis has thick, leathery, bright apple-green oval leaves with no gloss and no teeth. Escallonia has much smaller glossy dark leaves, finely toothed, and carries pink or red flowers through summer. Neither is fully hardy inland in a severe winter.
Reshoots from old wood: yes for both, though griselinia can be slow and patchy after a hard cut and is best reduced in stages.
Nesting birds and the law
Identifying a hedge usually means handling it, which is a good moment to look properly into it. Under section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 it is an offence to intentionally take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while that nest is in use or being built. There is no exemption for garden maintenance.
The main UK nesting season runs from roughly 1 March to 31 August. Those dates are guidance, not law. A blackbird may be sitting in February and a woodpigeon in September. What the law asks is whether the nest is in use.
Check each face before a blade is started and look again as you work, because the nest hidden from the path is often obvious from the ladder. Our full position is set out in the Kent Hedge Standard.
Once you know the species
If it is leylandii or Lawson cypress, the priority is never letting it reach a size you cannot come back from. Two or three cuts a year while it is in growth, always inside the green, and a batter on the sides so the base keeps its light. That is Conifer and Leylandii Care.
If it is yew, box, privet, hornbeam or Portuguese laurel, you have a hedge that will take a formal, architectural finish and recover from mistakes. Slower work, sharper blades, more than one pass, which is the Formal Hedge Service.
If it is beech or hornbeam, a single August cut holds the outline for the year and the winter leaf gives you screening no other deciduous hedge offers. That is usually a straightforward Hedge Tidy on an Annual Hedge Plan.
If it has already been left too long, the species decides whether the recovery is one season or three, and occasionally whether there is a recovery at all. That assessment is the first thing we do on a Hedge Rescue.
Identification questions we are asked
How do I tell leylandii from western red cedar?
Crush a handful of foliage. Western red cedar smells strongly sweet, usually described as pineapple or fruit gums, and the underside of its flat sprays carries pale white markings shaped like a butterfly or a stretched X.
Leylandii has almost no scent, or a faint resinous one, and is plain dull green underneath with sprays held at irregular angles rather than in flat planes. The distinction matters, because western red cedar makes a limited recovery from old wood and leylandii makes none.
How do I tell beech from hornbeam?
Look at the leaf edge. Beech has a smooth or gently wavy margin with a silky fringe of hairs when young. Hornbeam has a clearly toothed, saw-edged margin and deeper pleating along the veins, so the leaf looks corrugated.
The buds settle it in winter: beech buds are long, slender and pointed and stand away from the stem, hornbeam buds are short and pressed flat to it. Both hold dead brown leaves through winter, but beech holds far more of them.
Which hedge species grow back from bare brown wood?
Yew, box, privet, both laurels, holly, hawthorn, blackthorn, beech and hornbeam all will, although beech and hornbeam are slow about it. Leylandii, Lawson cypress and the rest of the Cupressaceae will not, with the single exception of western red cedar, which manages a partial and unreliable recovery.
Yew is the one conifer that reshoots freely. That is why a badly overgrown yew hedge is almost always recoverable and a badly overgrown leylandii hedge frequently is not.
Why does the species matter so much?
It decides three things: how often the hedge needs cutting, which months it can be cut in, and how far back it can be taken without permanent damage. Yew wants one late summer cut and can be reduced hard. Leylandii wants two or three cuts in the growing season and can only be reduced as far as its green growth reaches. Treating one like the other gives you either a hedge that is always overgrown or a brown scar that never heals.
What are the small glossy round leaves on my low garden hedge?
On a low formal hedge under about a metre, with paired oval leaves around two centimetres long, glossy dark green and slightly notched at the tip, it is almost certainly common box. Crushed box has a musty smell nobody forgets. Any box in Kent should be checked regularly for box blight and box tree caterpillar, both now widespread in the south east.
Still not certain what you have?
Send one photograph of the hedge and one close enough to see a single leaf or spray clearly. We will name it, tell you the right month to cut it, and say how far it can safely be taken back.