Large Scale Hedge Reduction in Richmond

Reducing a hedge sounds like a morning with a trimmer. On a long boundary run it is not. The cut has to hold a level over its whole length, the sides have to be plumb, and the volume of arisings is far beyond what a garden bin will take.

The work is done in passes. The first pass takes the top down close to the finished height and clears the bulk. The second pass sets the line, working off a string line pegged at each end so the top stays flat over the run. The sides are cut back to a face, checking plumb as we go.

Cutting the hedge down to finished height in one go and then tidying it is how a hedge ends up with a wave in the top that you cannot unsee from the kitchen window.

Laurel is one of the few hedging plants that will take a severe reduction and come back from it. Cut it into old wood and it will shoot again from the stems, which is why a hedge of this size can be brought down hard rather than removed and replanted.

The trade off is growth rate. Laurel puts on a lot of extension in a season, so a hedge reduced now will need cutting again within a year if the finished height is to hold. A hard reduction buys you the reset, not a permanent answer.

Not every species behaves like this. Conifer, for example, will not regenerate from bare wood, which is why a conifer hedge has to be trimmed little and often and cannot be cut back to bare stems.

Hedges are bird habitat. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 it is an offence to damage or destroy an active nest, and that applies to a garden hedge as much as to a field boundary.

The practical rule is that cutting is done outside the nesting season where possible, roughly March to August, and where a cut has to happen inside that window the hedge is checked first and work stops if a nest is found.

The best window for a hard laurel reduction is late winter, before growth starts. The hedge is dormant, the cut faces are clean, and the regrowth comes away evenly in spring.

A hedge line is judged from a distance, so the eye finds every fault in it. The top is set with a string line at both ends and checked along the length as the cut comes down to it.

The sides are cut to a face rather than an angle. A hedge that is wider at the top shades out its own base and thins from the bottom up, so the sides go back square or slightly tapered inwards.

Corners and the ends take longer than the middle. That is where a reduction either looks deliberate or looks like it ran out of care.

The small conifer beside the hedge was left standing and worked round. Hedges and garden features get damaged by fallen arisings and by feet, so the ground around anything staying was cleared before the cutting started.

Anything else in the border that was staying was marked and avoided. It is quicker to agree what is being kept at the start than to explain afterwards why a shrub looks like it has been run over.

A run of laurel this length produces a serious volume of green waste. It was raked as it came down, chipped and taken away, and the lawn was blown down to get the last of the leaves and cuttings off the grass.

The finished height is roughly waist to chest. Holding it there means a cut once a year, or twice if the growth is strong and the client wants it tight. A hedge that is left two seasons between cuts takes longer to bring back to line than one that is cut annually.