Instant Hedging?

murt101

Has anyone used instant hedging that comes in 1 metre troughs? Just wondering if it's worth the expense. Looks like a great solution for a new build to give instant privacy.

looksee

I would be a bit doubtful to be honest, though I am saying that from a standpoint of no actual experience of them.

The nearest I could find to what you are discussing is Ready Hedge. This appears to be a standard trough with - in the case of Laurel - a 2m hedge in it. The pricing and container size is not easy to establish though. Many of the hedge types listed as ready hedge do not appear to be available in anything other than standard single pots.

2 m high is a lot of hedge for a container of the size shown, especially several plants per trough. I would imagine the roots would have become 'container shaped' at this stage, so it is not clear how there is any advantage in getting them to establish - ie, spread their roots beyond their current shape.

The instructions for planting advise you to clear the soil and dig a trench - as you would for pots. It then vaguely says to put the run of hedging into the trench. I cannot imagine how many hands you would need to support a meter of plant roots while tipping a 2m high hedge out of a trough then getting it into the trench. If the ends came off the trough, or it pulled apart from the middle it might work, but they look like regular troughs.

Then it appears to be in the area of E170 per meter. If they were delivered and planted for you for that, maybe. Otherwise, I think I would go with bare roots, wind break and good preparation.

Lumen

I would do it with a slow growing hedge like yew where you might save 10 years of growth.

For a fast growing hedge it seems a bit pointless as the minimal time saved will be countered by poorer root development and risk of failure.

I've seen it done on expensive Dublin refurbs where they want to sell a house with a mature looking boundary and don't care what it looks like next year, let alone 10 years time.

Call me Al

We used it (laurel ready-hedge 2 or 3 troughs) for privacy screening after a neighbour's extension went up a few years back.

We had the trenches pre-dug and two big men lifted the plants out of the troughs. You wouldn't be able to do that on your own due to the length and weight of the trough and plants ..
The hedges thrived afterwards in spite of the fact that neither of us are in any way green-fingered . We may have just put a bit of fertiliser in the trench before it was planted, and then made sure to water it well until it was established. Eta I do remember watching it like a hawk in case it ran into trouble in light of the amount of money we had spent on it.

I've never needed to do anything with the hedge ever since other than trim it back.

emmetdoc1991

Hello
Would be unlikely to be worth it considering laurel is very fast growing... as the previous guy said, would only be worth it for slow growing hedge...

Used to do some landscaping in that area years and years ago and there was loads of 2-3 foot laurel options that i put in and within a few years they were 6-7 foot... Dublin nurseries can be expensive though... bought all my hedging for planting from nurseries in Donegal.. ( really good value)

NIMAN

emmetdoc1991 wrote: »

Hello
Would be unlikely to be worth it considering laurel is very fast growing... as the previous guy said, would only be worth it for slow growing hedge...

Used to do some landscaping in that area years and years ago and there was loads of 2-3 foot laurel options that i put in and within a few years they were 6-7 foot... Dublin nurseries can be expensive though... bought all my hedging for planting from nurseries in Donegal.. ( really good value)

I'm considering a laurel hedge soon (is it a good time of the year to plant potted laurels?), could you recommend a nursery in Donegal.