Annual Hedge Plan
One, two or three visits a year, at the right point in the season for your species, at a price agreed for the whole year before the first cut.
Almost every hedge that has gone wrong in Kent went wrong the same way. Not through bad cutting. Through the year somebody meant to book it and did not.
A hedge does not fail suddenly. It puts on a foot, then another foot, and the top drifts out of reach one season at a time. By the third missed year the sides have thickened past the point where trimming will bring them back in, the base has gone thin because no light reaches it, and what was a routine Hedge Tidy has become a reduction or a rescue. It costs more, it takes longer, and on conifers some of the damage never fully comes back.
The Annual Hedge Plan is the answer to that, and it is deliberately unexciting. Your hedges get a set number of visits a year, at agreed points in the season, for a figure fixed at the start. Nothing to remember, nothing to negotiate again in twelve months, nothing to chase.
How often, by species
The number of visits is not a sales tier. It is a horticultural answer that depends on how fast the hedge grows, whether it will regrow from old wood, and how crisp an outline you want it to hold between cuts. This is the guidance we work to before we have seen your hedge.
One visit a year
Beech, hornbeam, yew and mixed native hedgerow. Beech and hornbeam are marcescent, holding their browned leaf through winter, which is exactly why a single cut works: take it in August or September once growth has hardened and the hedge carries a tight, brown-gold outline right through to spring. Yew is slow enough that one late-summer clip holds a formal face, and it is the one conifer that will break from old wood, so it forgives a firmer cut. Mixed hedgerow of hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple and hazel is best cut once, late, and left alone the rest of the year for the blossom, the berries and the birds.
Two visits a year
Privet, laurel, escallonia, griselinia and photinia. All vigorous, all putting on enough growth in a season that one cut leaves the hedge shaggy for months. Privet and laurel tolerate hard pruning well; on laurel we prefer secateurs to a trimmer where the finish matters, because sliced leaves brown off along the cut edge and the whole face looks scorched for weeks. Escallonia and griselinia are the salt-tolerant coastal choices along the Thanet and Deal seafronts and want a light early cut then a tidy in late summer. Photinia is cut partly to bring on the red new growth it is planted for.
Two or three visits a year
Leylandii and other fast conifers, including western red cedar. These are the hedges that need the most discipline and get the least. Leylandii and its relatives in the Cupressaceae will not reshoot from brown wood, so the green shell is the only thing you have to work with. Cut it two or three times a season and that shell stays thick, dense and inside a size you can hold indefinitely. Miss two years and the only way back is into wood that will never green over. Three visits suits a hedge being held to a tight height or one in full sun on a fertile Kent loam; two is enough for most.
A note on box
Box is on a plan of its own. Two light clips a year keep the shape, but the real work is watching for box blight (Calonectria pseudonaviculata) and box tree caterpillar (Cydalima perspectalis), both now widespread in the south east. Plan visits on box include an inspection for both, and tools are cleaned between hedges. See the Formal Hedge Service for how box and yew are handled.
The first inspection decides everything after it
We do not set a plan from a phone call. We come and look at the hedge first, and that inspection is what the whole plan is built on. What we are reading: the species and how it has been cut before, the height and width you want held, the aspect and how much sun each face gets, the state of the base, whether the hedge has a proper batter on it, and whether anything needs putting right before a maintenance rhythm makes any sense.
The batter matters more than most people expect. A hedge cut slightly narrower at the top than at the base lets light down to the bottom growth and sheds snow instead of splaying under it. A hedge cut dead vertical, or worse, wider at the top, starves its own base and goes bare at the bottom within a few years. If yours has drifted that way, the plan starts with Hedge Shape to put the batter back, and the plan visits hold it from then on.
Out of that inspection comes a plan on one page: the number of visits, roughly when in the season each falls, what each visit covers, and the price for the year. If the hedge needs one-off remedial work first we quote that separately, so you can see plainly what is catching up and what is keeping up.
The plan is the schedule. HedgeCare is everything around it.
The Annual Hedge Plan is the timetable: how many visits, when, at what price. HedgeCare is the part that makes the timetable actually happen. We hold the record for your hedge, we watch the season, we contact you before each visit rather than waiting to be called, and we photograph the hedge before and after every time so the next cut continues the last one instead of starting from an opinion.
A plan without that is a piece of paper. A plan with it is the reason customers on HedgeCare stop thinking about their hedges altogether. We remember so you don't have to.
What a visit includes
- A nesting check first. Every hedge is checked before a blade starts, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The main season runs roughly 1 March to 31 August. If a nest is in use we work another face or come back.
- The cut itself, to the lines set at inspection, with the batter held and the top run to a line rather than judged from below.
- Clippings blown out of the hedge, not left sitting in the top to brown off through the autumn.
- Full clear-up. Paths, beds, lawns and drives cleared, green waste removed and disposed of responsibly.
- Photographs and notes on the record, before and after, kept against your hedge.
- A condition note if anything has changed. Dieback, a thinning face, blight on box, a section pressing on a fence. You hear it from us at the visit, not two years later.
Before you commit to a year
How many visits a year does my hedge need?
Beech, hornbeam, yew and mixed native hedgerow hold a good outline on one visit a year, taken late in the season. Privet, laurel, escallonia, griselinia and photinia want two. Leylandii and other fast conifers need two or three to stay inside a size that can be maintained at all, because they cannot be cut back into brown wood once they pass it. The final answer depends on the height you want held and how sharp a finish you are after.
Is the price fixed for the year?
Yes. Once the plan is set after the first inspection, the figure for the year's visits is agreed and does not move. The only thing that changes it is you asking for different work, such as a reduction in height or an extra hedge added to the plan, and that is quoted separately before anything is done.
Can a plan start on a hedge that is already overgrown?
It can, but the first job is usually not a plan visit. An overgrown hedge normally needs Hedge Reduction or Hedge Rescue first to get it back to a size and shape worth maintaining. That is quoted as a one-off, and the plan starts from the shape it leaves behind.
What happens if the weather stops a visit?
We move it and tell you. Hedges are not cut in high wind, and wet growth on a formal hedge does not take a clean edge. A visit moved by a few days makes no difference to the hedge, and the plan absorbs it without you having to rebook anything.
Plans run at let property under Landlord Hedge Care and across business premises under Commercial Hedge Maintenance. Every visit is held to the Kent Hedge Standard, and £1 million public liability insurance covers all work we carry out.
Put the year in the diary once
Tell us what you have growing and roughly how long it runs. We will inspect it, set the number of visits it genuinely needs, and give you a price for the year.