Hedge species advice

[Peter Bovey]

Hello

Against my advice we've had part of our garden covered in floor bricks, as somewhere to take the car off the road. Between that area and the pavement we are thinking to plant a lowish hedge to mark the edge of our space and stop people wandering in. I am after advice as to suitable plants for that purpose. Plants suitable for a hedge three to four foot high maximum, that will stay compact down to the bottom and won't get leggy. We'll have to remove two or three bricks in order to plant each one and I'm not sure how easy it is going to be to prepare the soil in each little space, so it should be a species which takes easily and ideally doesn't suffer drought easily as most of the surrounding ground will be hard covered. Something that also produces flowers would be a marvellous bonus.

Has anybody any suggestions please?

Thank you Peter

[Peter Bovey]

Just realised that it is an international group, so I should say that I live in the UK, West Yorkshire to be precise.

Thanks Peter

[RosietheRiviter]

Not sure of suitability for your area but little princess spirea and shirobana spirea fit the bill for growth. The only thing I found about them is they self seed greatly but if you mow up to them or have pavers then it may not be a problem. Little princess is the shortest.

[paghat]

If you could build a fence-like trellis you could espalier evergreen Camellia sasanqua or deciduous flowering quince and since they can be trained almost like vines it wouldn't take as many plants to result in an extremely narrow plant barrier.

It sounds like it might be kind of a rough area for small shrubs to thrive in, but some tough shrubs of considerable beauty: 'Mount Airy' fothergilla has bottlebrush flowers in spring, superb autumn leaf color. Hibiscus syriacus has several semi-dwarf cultivars that would not get too big for the space, & have large showy flowers throughout summer. 'Autumn Magic' Chokeberry has small white hawthorn-like flowers in May & shiny black berries that can last into winter, & excellent autumn leaf color. These would form an airy hedgerow as they're not widely spreading shrubs, so also wouldn't impinge on the parking area. But if you wanted to have to hedge & shape & prune a lot, something like Miss Kim Dwarf Lilac would spread into a complete thick barrier. Rockroses also form a dense barrier & just about never need watering. At the very corner it might be useful to have something thorny like a no-maintenance rugosa rose, but wouldn't want that anywhere near were you'd be exiting car doors. A mixed hedge might be more interesting than a single species.

-paghat the ratgirl

[Peter Bovey]

Hello,

There are some very interesting suggestions there, from both of you. Thank you very much. I've already checked out some of them on the Internet. However, before I do anything else I'll post the question to a UK Gardening newsgroup (which is what I should have done in the first place) and see what's revealed there.

Regards

Peter