Just one Leyland tree - not a hedge

Chop it down and start again. It's a permanent pruning nightmare.

But those Italian jobs aren't Leylandii, they're Cupressus sempervirens, Mediterranean (aka Italian) cypress, an entirely different beast altogether. See

We've done that, replacing with beech/hornbeam. Another hedge is still Leylandii kept in check at 6ft or so, with an annual trim, very thick and a useful wind break.

Silver beech was one of my choices this next year.

It bloody well will grow back. We have a neighbours hedge consisting of 17 ft high leyleandii which we couldn't top as it was a march hedge. When he f inally faced his side back to the trunk I took the opportunity to top it, T hat was a good few years back and the tops all grew back.

Never heard of a march hedge. What is it?

Certainly, tops will grow; actually not the tops of the trunks as such, but upper branches will turn up and start growing skywards at a rate. The tops of the lengthy Leylandii hedge here when we bought the place would grow at least 4ft every year, requiring a major operation annually to cut it back. Yes, I should have cut it more frequently, probably three times a year, but it was awkward to get at and took a lot of time and effort. I eventually took it out.

But lower down, on the faces of the hedge, cutting the green outer bits back into the brown dross behind is asking for permanent dead areas.

If the OP is prepared to devote time and effort to trimming his tree several times a year, doesn't mind a rather uninteresting specimen tree, and isn't concerned as to what may happen in the future, that's fine. Me, I'd plant something different.

The OP also asked about root-spread. This may be helpful

Some general tips here

Those look remarkably slender.

From memory I'm sure I've seen lots of conifers in Italy which are wider in proportion and also a bit more bottom heavy than those. Perhaps these are imported species rather than those native ones. Of course, maybe my memory is playing up!

Many of the Italians are bottom heavy Pamela - it's probably the pasta that does it :)

Andrew

Make sure you fertilize them well with plenty of rock salt.

Also hoovers up all the moisture and nutrients all around it. When you finally do chop it down, the ground will be like concrete.

Didn't know that, but I never said Leyland was wrong I was more alluding to the explanation of Tim's joke

Brother and his family went there for a holiday (Haven) all I can remeber is his two girls raving about some bear mascot thing (Bradley).

Anyway more apropos this thread:- Didn't know any of that , but I never said Leyland was wrong I was more alluding to an explanation of Tim's joke

the roots all to the same point.

Leylands are simply not suited to typical domestic use.

They almost always fail to get trimmed at some point, and after that you can't bring them back to size. They've caused so many disputes. Do yourself a favour and get rid. Yes they're cheap & quick growing, but like so many cheap instant things you only regret it.

That's true.

Some Italians are slim like the cypresses and others are not so slim like, er, um. Well. You know. :-)

Thing is most households go through a period at some point when they can't or don't prune. That's when they become a headache. For some reason most people think that won't happen to them, but like disease, death & taxes it does eventually.

NT

I must admit they are very nice ... for feeding though a chipper (as they often have nice straight and thin(ish) branches). ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Get rid of it straight away and buy a dwarf variety.

I replaced our 30 yr+ Leylandii hedge by cutting the trees off at 6ft and planting Laurels in the gaps between tree but slightly offset outwards. Compost was added to the planting holes. The planting strip was rotivated. This enabled me to retain the wire fencing held up by the trees which keeps the dogs of the dog walkers out of the garden. It was necessary to install some irrigation hose to keep the Laurels from drying out for the first year after planting. Last year, the front shrubbery was razed to the ground and smaller shrubs planted to reduce maintenance. It was very fortunate timing as 6 months later a drain blocked and one of the manhole covers I had exposed after being buried over a foot deep for 40 yrs needed to be opened. The blockage was due to the old shrub roots.

I also made the mistake of planting a couple of eucalyptus trees, Very pretty for the first couple of years but went skywards at an alarming rate. I found them worse than Leylandii. The chainsaw solved that problem.