Tips on choosing and using hedges

Hedges act as living fences to define a yard or plot of land and, depending on the plants chosen, can also provide visual cover. Here are tips to help you use hedges to your advantage.

• Plant a flowering hedge to partially encircle a bench in the yard. Mix ornamental shrubs that bloom at different times, such as lilac, forsythia, rose of Sharon, seabuckthorn and butterfly bush.
• Choose nearly impenetrable shrubs such as barberry, scarlet firethorn, blackthorn, holly, hawthorn and wild roses for even more privacy, and to discourage wild animals from entering or your housepets from leaving. They all have spines or thorns.
• Provide evergreen visual cover with barberry, mountain pine, boxwood, yew, cherry laurel, privet, rhododendron, spreading cotoneaster, Hinoki false cypress and arborvitae.
• If you want a fast-growing hedge, plant hedge maple, cherry laurel or privet. Conifers like Leyland cypress and Hinoki false cypress are also good choices.
• Use tall bushes or sunflowers for quick-growing visual cover. Ferns and tall ornamental grass varieties, such as giant Chinese silver grass, also achieve vertical height quickly.
• Consider hardy evergreen bamboos for a great privacy hedge; their dark emerald canes hold their colour even in the coldest winter. They grow quickly and tall, and some varieties have especially thick foliage for providing visual cover. Use a combination of different-coloured leaves or stems to provide visual interest.
• Leaf hedges consisting of European hornbeam or copper beech are an excellent choice. They don't lose all their leaves in the winter and they provide shelter for hedgehogs and other useful creatures. Birds are often drawn to privet and barberry.

Tip: Annual climbing plants such as sweet pea, nasturtium, morning glory, purple bell vine and firecracker vine grow very quickly, don't take up much room and don't need to be trimmed. Plant them in the spring, providing the shoots with something to cling to; remove the dead plants in the late fall.