Hedge Reduction
Bringing height or width down to a size you can live with and we can maintain, taken only as far as the species will tolerate.
How far will it come back?
Everybody asks how far the hedge can be cut. The honest answer depends on what it is, and it is a very different answer for a yew than for a leylandii.
Reduction is the job of making a hedge smaller and then keeping it there. Height off the top, width off the faces, or both. It is what people want when a hedge has quietly become a building: blocking a window, shading half the garden, or no longer reachable from a stepladder.
The work itself is not difficult. Knowing where to stop is. Past the limit set by the plant you are not cutting a hedge, you are creating a permanent hole, so we measure that limit before quoting and tell you where it falls. If the hedge is already the size you want and simply looks untidy, you want Hedge Tidy or Hedge Shape instead.
What each hedge will take
These are the working rules we quote from, and they are all about where new growth comes from after the cut.
- PrivetTakes hard pruning better than almost anything, breaking readily from thick old wood, so a substantial reduction is realistic in one or two stages.
- LaurelVigorous and tolerant of heavy cutting, including into bare stems. Formal laurel is finished with secateurs, because trimmer-sliced leaves brown off at the edges.
- Beech and hornbeamReshoot from old wood, slowly and less reliably than privet. Reduce in stages, in the dormant season, and expect a season of bare structure first.
- YewThe exception among conifers. Yew breaks readily from old wood and can be reduced hard, which is why centuries-old yew hedges are renovated rather than replaced.
- Leylandii, western red cedar and other CupressaceaeWill not reshoot from brown wood. Height comes off freely, width only as far as the green reaches.
- BoxReduces reliably but slowly, and only when healthy. We check for box blight (Calonectria pseudonaviculata) and box tree caterpillar (Cydalima perspectalis) first.
- Escallonia and griseliniaBoth take a firm reduction and reshoot well, useful on the Kent coast where wind burn spoils the top of a hedge.
- Hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple and hazelThe old mixed Kent hedgerow species, all regenerating strongly. These can genuinely be cut back to a framework and rebuilt.
The brown wood problem
Inside a mature leylandii hedge, behind the green shell, is a dense mass of bare brown stems shaded out for years, with no growing points left on it. Cut the face back into that brown and it stays brown, because Cupressaceae do not shoot from old wood.
That is why width reduction on a conifer hedge has a fixed ceiling. On a regularly trimmed hedge the green shell may be twenty or thirty centimetres deep, and the face can come in that far. On one left for a decade it is often shallower. We check by parting the foliage along the run before quoting, because the depth varies between the sunny and the shaded side of the same hedge.
Yew breaks from old wood
Yew is the one conifer that will produce new growth from bare, brown, apparently dead stems. A yew hedge cut back to its trunks will, given a season or two, clothe itself again from the inside out.
It is the reason we will quote work on an overgrown yew that we would refuse on a leylandii of the same size. Detail on that finish sits under the Formal Hedge Service.
Staging a reduction
A large reduction on a broadleaf hedge is spread across seasons and faces. It is the difference between a hedge that recovers and one that sulks for five years.
Season one: the top and one face
Height comes down to the target and the worse face is taken back. The other keeps its full leaf, which is what powers the regrowth, so the hedge still screens throughout.
Season two: the second face
Once the first cut face has broken and started to furnish, the other side comes back to match and the top is trued to a line.
Season three, where needed
On very large or very old hedges, a final pass tightens the outline and puts a proper batter on, tapering the sides so light reaches the base and snow slides off the top.
Then a maintenance cycle
A reduced hedge only stays reduced if somebody cuts it on time, which is where HedgeCare earns its place: the visits go in the diary and you are reminded before we come.
Timing follows the species and the law. We work outside the main UK nesting season, roughly 1 March to 31 August, wherever possible, and check every hedge for active nests before a blade starts, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Broadleaf reductions suit the dormant season; conifer work is taken while the plant is still in growth.
The legal side of a tall hedge
High hedges: Part 8 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003
England has no general legal height limit for a hedge. What it has is a complaints route. Part 8 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 lets somebody whose reasonable enjoyment of their home or garden is affected complain to the council about a neighbouring hedge over 2 metres tall that is formed wholly or predominantly by a line of two or more evergreen or semi-evergreen trees or shrubs.
The council will normally expect the complainant to have tried to resolve it directly first, can charge a fee to consider the complaint, and if it agrees can serve a remedial notice setting out what has to be cut and by when. Failing to comply is an offence. Single trees and hedges under 2 metres sit outside the scheme. Most of these situations never reach the council: a hedge brought down and held on a cycle removes the complaint entirely.
Cutting back to your own boundary
If a neighbour's hedge grows across the boundary, you may generally cut back the growth that crosses it, as far as the boundary line, without going onto their land. You may not reduce the height on their side, or trespass to reach it.
The cuttings are the point people get wrong. Material you cut off remains the property of the hedge's owner, and should be offered back rather than thrown over the fence, which is how a hedge disagreement becomes something worse.
Protections such as a conservation area, a tree preservation order or a planning condition requiring a screen to be retained can change all of this, so check before commissioning work. We are hedge specialists rather than legal advisers, and on a contested boundary take proper advice.
Very tall boundary hedges are worked from platforms and towers under the Tall Hedge Service. Where a hedge is beyond reducing, we will say so and quote for removal instead.
About reducing a hedge
How far can a leylandii hedge be cut back?
Height can almost always be taken off a leylandii hedge, because the cut is made across the top and the sides carry the green. Width can be brought in as far as the green growth reaches on that face, and no further. Leylandii and the other Cupressaceae will not reshoot from bare brown wood, so cutting past the green leaves a permanent brown scar. We measure the depth of green before quoting and tell you exactly where the limit falls.
Why does a big reduction take more than one visit?
Taking a large amount off every face at once removes most of the hedge's leaf area in one go, which stresses the plant when it most needs energy to reshoot. On broadleaf hedges such as privet, laurel, beech, hornbeam and yew we reduce the top and one face, let it recover for a season, then take the other face. The hedge stays a working screen throughout and comes back far denser than it would from a single hard cut.
Very tall boundary hedges are worked from platforms and towers under the Tall Hedge Service. Where a hedge is beyond reducing, we will say so and quote for removal instead.
Find out how far yours will go
Tell us the species, the current height and the height you want. We will tell you whether it is achievable, in one season or three, before you commit to anything.