Conifer & Leylandii Care
The fastest hedges in Kent, kept at a height you chose, by cutting them often enough that the difficult decisions never have to be made.
One rule decides everything about a leylandii
It will not reshoot from brown wood. Every other decision about a conifer hedge follows from that single fact.
Leyland cypress, x Cuprocyparis leylandii, is a hybrid conifer capable of putting on something in the order of 60 to 90 centimetres of growth in a good year on decent Kent ground, and it will keep doing it for decades. That vigour is why it was planted on half the post-war estates in the county, and why it is the hedge people most often want help with. It makes a dense, fast, evergreen screen faster than anything else you can buy.
The problem is that it has no dormant buds in its old brown wood. Cut a broadleaf hedge such as privet, laurel or hawthorn hard into bare stems and it will break out again from those stems within a season or two. Cut a leylandii into the brown, and that face stays brown. Permanently. There is no fertiliser, feed, season or technique that changes it. Yew is the one common conifer that breaks the rule and will refurnish from old wood, which is why a yew hedge can be renovated and a leylandii cannot.
Western red cedar, Thuja plicata, is slightly more forgiving. It will sometimes produce new growth from older wood where a little green remains and the plant is vigorous, and it recovers from a hard side cut better than leylandii does. Slightly more forgiving is not the same as forgiving, and we still work it on the same discipline.
Cut into green. Every visit, every face, no exceptions.
Working a conifer hedge properly means finishing every cut inside living green foliage, so the hedge has something to grow back from. In practice that puts a hard limit on how much can come off in one go, and it means the hedge has to be visited before it outgrows the green shell it carries.
A hedge cut on that discipline can be held at the same height and width indefinitely. A hedge that is only cut when somebody notices it has got too big cannot, because by then the green shell has moved and the old line is inside the brown. This is the difference between maintenance and damage, and it is the whole reason we sell conifer work as regular control rather than as one-off cuts.
Two or three visits a year, and what each one is for
Late spring to early summer
The first flush comes off once growth has properly started and while the hedge is still actively growing, so it heals and greens up quickly. On tall screens this is the visit that keeps the top within reach of the working height rather than letting it run away over summer.
Midsummer, on three-visit hedges
Vigorous hedges in full sun, or any hedge held to a tight formal face, get a middle cut. It is a lighter visit than the other two. Its job is to stop the summer growth spurt turning into 40 centimetres of proud material that has to be taken back in one bite later.
Late summer to early autumn
The main cut. Nesting season is over, the season's growth has hardened, and the hedge is set up to hold a clean outline through winter. This is the visit that determines how the hedge looks for the next six months, so it is where the batter and the top line are checked and corrected.
Deep winter, avoided
We do not take significant cuts off conifers in hard frost or the depths of winter. Cut foliage does not recover while the plant is dormant and cold-damaged cut edges brown off. Small corrective work is fine. A full cut is better waited for.
Every visit includes a nesting bird check before a blade is started, in line with the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Conifer hedges are among the most heavily used nesting sites in a suburban garden, precisely because they are dense and evergreen. If we find an active nest we work another face, or come back.
Left five years, and one side gone brown
Both are common, both are honest conversations, and neither has a miracle answer.
- The hedge left five yearsAssume roughly three metres of extra height and a considerable gain in width. Height can nearly always be taken off, because a conifer will hold a flat cut top without needing to regrow into it. Width is the difficult part: the green is now only on the outer skin, and bringing the sides back to where they were means cutting into brown that will stay brown. Often the correct outcome is a reduced height, one face cut hard and accepted as a brown wall for a few years if it faces away from the house, and the visible face taken in only as far as green allows.
- One side has gone brownUsually shading, either from a building, a fence pushed hard against the hedge, or another hedge planted too close. Sometimes it follows a hard cut by somebody who did not know the rule. Leylandii will not fill it back in. What can be done: clear whatever is shading it, thin the top so light reaches down, plant in front of it if the space allows, or accept it as the hidden face and hold the rest well. What cannot be done is promising it will green up.
- When removal is the honest answerWhere a conifer hedge is brown on both visible faces, thin at the base and only green at a height nobody wants, we will say so and quote for Hedge Removal and replanting instead of taking money for a cut that cannot fix it.
- Where reduction fitsA one-off drop in height on a hedge that is otherwise sound is Hedge Reduction, and a badly overgrown screen coming back over stages is Hedge Rescue. Conifer Care is what takes over afterwards to make sure it never goes back.
Pick a height and we keep it there
Most people do not want a taller hedge. They want the screen they already have, at the height it is now, without thinking about it. That is a maintenance decision, not a cutting one: agree the height, and every visit holds it rather than trimming whatever has grown since.
Holding a line also puts a proper batter on the sides, cut slightly narrower at the top than the base, so light reaches the bottom of the hedge and the base stays furnished instead of thinning out. A conifer hedge that goes bare and leggy at the bottom has almost always been cut with vertical or top-heavy faces for years.
Included on every conifer visit
- Nesting check first. Every face inspected before a machine is started.
- Cut into green. No cutting back into brown wood, and we will tell you before we start how far the green reaches.
- Batter maintained. Narrower at the top, so the base keeps its foliage.
- Top blown clear. Loose cuttings taken out of the hedge rather than left to brown off in the crown.
- Site cleared. Paths, beds, lawns and driveways left clean.
- Waste taken. Green waste removed and disposed of responsibly.
- Photographs kept. So the next visit continues the last, per the Standard.
Conifer hedges are the strongest case on the whole site for HedgeCare. A hedge that grows this fast is the one you most want somebody else remembering for you.
Get the conifers back under control, and keep them there
Tell us the rough length, the height it stands at now, and the height you would like it held at. We will tell you honestly what can come off this year and what cannot.