Thick Flowering Hedge

I am looking for a thick, tall, flowering, fast-growing hedge that does well in California. So far Oleander looks like a good candidate.

I need:

  • Approximately four feet wide, and dense enough that you cannot see through it.
  • Flowering, preferably multiple times a year
  • Eight to 10 feet tall
  • Very fast growing
  • Does well in direct sun and shade

This would be in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mediterranean climate and not directly on the coast.

I have been trying Photinia as a hedge, but it simply isn't thick enough. It shoots up new growth in a few major branches, but even in the thickest sections you can see right through it. It would take six years to get thick at the current rate, and even then it might not be dense.

Reply to
W
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HB

Reply to
Higgs Boson

Oleander tastes awful, and you need to ingest fairly large quantities to cause poisoning. So unlikely humans are going to ingest it?

Is it attractive to any specific types of animals (e.g., rabbits, squirrels, rats, dogs, etc)?

Reply to
W

Accidental poisoning by oleanders is extremely rare. The most common instances occur in public parks where users cut long, thin branches of oleander to use as BBQ skewers. Even then, those people become slightly ill but not dead.

Other common garden plants are also poisonous. One leaf of a peach tree contains enough cyanide to kill a small child; the almond-like kernel in the pit can kill an adult. Foxglove makes an excellent tea that is medicine for heart disease; but if the tea is too strong, it is deadly (digitalis). Lilies of the valley are quite toxic. While the fruit of Natal plum is both edible and tasty, the rest of the plant is as toxic as its near releative: oleander. The foliage of tomato and potato plants is toxic since those are related to tobacco. Etc, etc.

Reply to
David E. Ross

Consider Viburnum. See Sunset's "Western Garden Book" for this genus. Several species are suitable for your climate, make excellent screens, and have fragrant flowers.

I happen to like oleander. In southern California where I live, however, there is a blight killing them. The blight might eventually reach the San Francisco area.

Reply to
David E. Ross

Many sites on-line pass on this supposed risk. Oleander is poisonous that's true but it isn't that much risk because you would have to really work at it to ingest enough to get sick much less dead. How you would get an animal or child to eat enough of this bad-tasting woody stuff to be dangerous is never explained. Then there are the stories of the BBQ made with oleander wood where everybody gets sick. Those who are so careless to make a fire and cook food on it with any material at hand without being sure of the consequences have plenty of opportunities to Darwin themselves (and their neighbours) out of the population aside from growing oleanders. If you want to remove every risk from your garden then you have much work to do.

On a more practical level, the requirement to be dense and fast growing but to stop growing at a certain height may not be possible. If you have a shrub or bushy tree that meets the first two you are likely to be trimming it frequently to keep it at the height you want. The height a hedge grows to depends on its genetics and the local conditions not the figure you had in mind when you planted it.

D
Reply to
David Hare-Scott

It's certainly okay to be constantly trimming the hedge on top. The height requirement was a minimum, not maximum.

Reply to
W

Reply to
Jeff Layman

Another one is wax-leaf privet (Ligustrum japonicum). This can grow 10 ft high and 8 ft wide with dense foliage to the ground. The flowers are white. I don't like it because I am allergic to the flowers. Be careful; according to Sunset, nurseries often sell plants labeled as L. japonicum that are actually L. lucidum (a tree).

Reply to
David E. Ross

Murraya paniculata- the rain tree. or any lilly pilly species.

Reply to
kris anthem um

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