Recommend a bush/hedge that grows fast, is prickly?

Hi folks,


I have a garden wall that every now and again has kids sitting on it. They're not the biggest nuisance in the world, but can be noisy at times.

Noticed a neighbour nearby has a hedge growing in his garden that has grown up over the wall and sits about a foot taller than the wall, on the wall (so you cant sit on it).

Not sure what kinda hedging it is, and have no real knowledge of this kinda thing, so figured I'd turn to ye guys for some advice?

My garden wall is on a slop/hill, so the height of it (from the outside, on the footpath) ranges from about 2ft to 4ft. For this reason, i dont think i can put an overly thorny bush in as i dont want to accidentally catch people's clothes, hurt children etc that may just be walking by. Although i guess that is mostly down to maintaining it and not letting it grow out onto the footpath.

But i do want something that you wouldnt sit on, push at, etc. without hurting yourself.


Inside the garden, the wall is about 4ft all the way around, so ideally i'd like something that'll grow about 6ft (though im guessing most plants just keep growing forever, and you have to just cut them regularly to keep them to size?).

Could anyone advise here?


Cheers folks.

Also, I know people may throw out some randon hedge names and such, if anyone could also suggest where to go to buy them, that'd be great too

magicbastarder

you're in louth - shouldn't be that far to travel to tully's nurseries in north county dublin (a few miles from lusk); they'd have a good range of stuff to check out.

_Brian

Ask your neighbor what he’s growing, it obviously does well in your area and suits your requirements.

Future Forests in cork is hard to beat.

Scribbler100

We had the same problem on our front wall with kids sitting there dropping cans, crisp packets, sweet wrappers etc. into the garden. Worse was when they hopped over the wall and (albeit accidentally) landed on plants in the front flowerbed. When they destroyed a beautiful eryngium I decided to get small, pointy railings set into the top of the wall. They worked a treat! As a thorny hedge, perhaps pyracantha as recommended recently on this forum? I have also used rosa rugosa to provide a prickly barrier just inside a fence. I don't know Louth at all, but perhaps Tully's as suggested by magicbastarder could supply or possibly order plants in for you?

macraignil

Hawthorn and blackthorn might have too severe thorns and be abit vigorous for what you describe. Maybe holy, berberis darwinii or mahonia might be worth considering. They have prickly leaves that would be uncomfortable to sit on but not likely to cause injury as something more thorny might. Not been to Louth so can't recommend any nurseries there but Johnstown garden centre south of Dublin seems to have a great range of plants. Obviously it would be cheaper to go direct to a nursery.

Scribbler100

Scribbler100 wrote: »

We had the same problem on our front wall with kids sitting there dropping cans, crisp packets, sweet wrappers etc. into the garden. Worse was when they hopped over the wall and (albeit accidentally) landed on plants in the front flowerbed. When they destroyed a beautiful eryngium I decided to get small, pointy railings set into the top of the wall. They worked a treat! As a thorny hedge, perhaps pyracantha as recommended recently on this forum? I have also used rosa rugosa to provide a prickly barrier just inside a fence. I don't know Louth at all, but perhaps Tully's as suggested by magicbastarder could supply or possibly order plants in for you?

I've considered railings, and they will be the long-term solution. Although the Council have plans to cul-de-sac my street in about 2-3 years, which would kill off any passing footfall and make railings redundant (except for aesthetics).


To be honest, the front wall is a bit damaged, and could do with having some new capping, being re-plastered, etc. and the top is damaged so that'd have to be fixed before a railing could go on.


I got a rough price of about €1k to install a spear-head railing and matching gate, and I'd probably spend about 500-600 getting the wall itself sorted before the railing can actually go onto it, so doing the railing, although my preferred option, is probably going on the long finger until I found out what the Council's plans are for the street.





In the meantime, I wandered over to Ashbrook Garden Centre on Sunday and looked at a few bits. They had a holly plan (Ilax) that was about 3ft tall, for €20, so i bought it. They had three of them, but i only picked up one. Plan is to just see how it gets on (although I have since messaged a hedge company that sells smaller Holly for €7 or so each, to get about 6 or 7 plants off them, but unsure if they'll sell such a small amount, they're called ReadyHedge.ie - I think they might be aimed at trade only or only deal with big jobs).




So I'll see how this goes for me.

Sorry, meant to ask: Can anyone tell me how wide a typical ilax/holly plant will grow? Im tempted to fly back up to ashbrook and take the other 2 plants and see how they get on.

I heard someone say (or googled, not sure where i got this info) that they go about 3ft (1 meter) wide? and as a result should be planted 1.5ft away from each other? is that right? My wall is about 15ft but I'd only need to cover a section of it, really.

macraignil

Deleted User wrote: »

Sorry, meant to ask: Can anyone tell me how wide a typical ilax/holly plant will grow? Im tempted to fly back up to ashbrook and take the other 2 plants and see how they get on.

I heard someone say (or googled, not sure where i got this info) that they go about 3ft (1 meter) wide? and as a result should be planted 1.5ft away from each other? is that right? My wall is about 15ft but I'd only need to cover a section of it, really.

There are different varieties of holy so the eventual width they grow to will depend on this, how they are pruned as they grow and the conditions they are growing in. The rhs website gives the linked information on one type here. The ultimate spread of 2.5 to 8 metres should be fairly accurate, but how long the plants take to reach this could vary and so for a hedge a general planting distance of 3 feet would be typical so any gaps are filled in relatively quickly. There is a holy in the derelict garden of the old farm house next to where I live now that is over 10metres tall and about 4metres wide but this has not been trimmed back in decades and could be nearly a hundred years old. My parents have a holy plant that has been walked on and generally neglected and has remained less than 1metre wide and 60cm tall over the last twenty years.

Apparently what I have is just 'Common Holly'/Ilax.

I took a couple of pics:









Plan to stick them in the garden in the next couple of days, weekend at latest, all going well. Gonna go for 3.5ft between them (spread them out a bit). Only thing I feel a bit sad about is that if i decide to re-plaster the wall or do the garden next year, they may never even get to reach the height of the wall! (they're about a foot lower, than they need to be, I'd say).

Hi folks,

Just back with another quick question or two if anyone can assist, in relation to laurel hedging.


My front garden has two walls, one which is on the footpath, and one which is on a small green area (L shaped). I'm planning to stick the holly at the footpath length of the wall (as thats the one most affected by people sitting on it) and was considering sticking something cheaper (laurel) along the other wall. Doesnt need to be as thorny or aggressive as rarely will the other wall ever really be sat on or touched.


So my two questions are.. Is laurel as difficult to keep in line as people make out? Will I really be out with a chainsaw every week regretting ever buying it? Also, can anyone recommend a place to buy laurel? Looking for it about 3-5ft tall. I did find it locally about that height for approx €20-25 but reckon i might ask if this is a good or bad price before buying? My wall is about 13ft, so i dunno how many i'd need (I presume laurel grows sideways aswell as upwards).



The other thing that entered my mind was, could I plant the laurel and the holly within each other (ie; plant a laurel, a holly, a laurel, a holly, etc.). Would this give me a hedge-like affair of the green big leaves but also with some thorny greenery from the holly mixed through it? Or would one plant just kill off the other one? (im thinking the greenery of the laurel would be nice looking, but the aggressive nature of the holly would still keep people away from it).


Anyone able to offer any advice? Planning to plant the holly on sunday morning. aimed to do it this morning and digging the soil was like digging concrete. So watered it down a bit and will continue to do so randomly until sunday when i'll get a chance to plant them, in a hopefully moist soil where they wont dry out and die.

Lumen

Mixing holly and laurel won't work unless you give the holly about a decade head start and even then it'll get swamped.

Leave the laurel for the tall wall.

Now is a terrible time to plant shrubs, you should wait until late autumn or next spring.

sullivk

If you wait until late Autumn/early Spring you'll get bareroot hedging plants for a fraction of the cost.
We planted a bareroot hornbeam hedge in Spring '17 and it's coming on well (although this drought ain't doing it any favours!). Think it cost us approx €1 per plant.
A Rosa Rugosa hedge could be nice?

Lepidoptera

Holly grows slowly, so it won't be forming a big hedge any time soon.

RebelButtMunch

Gooseberry. Prickliest bush ever

Howdy do folks.


I'm afraid I've already settled on Holly. So much so that I visited a garden centre today (had a bit of downtime whilst working in cavan, so went to Urcher Garden Centre) and picked up another 3 Holly plants. The same price as Ashbrook (€20) but seem to be growing differently (not as bushy, but taller). There's no name on the pot, but here's a quick pic:





Plan now is to plant them alternating one from the other. I presume in a few years they'll blend in with each other anyway.


The laurel idea is out of my head now, as I've seen that Holly can grow into a half-decent hedge (albeit over time). I was in a nursery in Cavan and they had a holly hedge, but the bottom half was practically bald, so that was what had me thinking about the Laurel to keep it all bushy and green looking.


Im planting this in a garden that's been neglected for about 30 years. Hard-ish soil, grass/weeds galore. Should I dig a hole for each plant the size of the pot its in (well, a little larger) or would it make more sense to dig a 'trench' of sorts and stick a whole heap of compost down to try and keep the original soil away a bit?

Chap in the Garden Centre said try to keep grass away from the bottom of them for a year or two as grass growing at the base can be damaging. But unsure how to actually achieve that.

macraignil

I find usually the less disturbed the soil the better plants settle so don't think digging a big trench and filling with compost would be the best approach. Clearing the current vegetation is important as this will compete with your hedge so this would be the first step before planting your holly. I'd go with the hole slightly bigger than the pot approach and sit the holy plants into this, making sure to water well before and after.

The best way to keep the base of the plants free of grass and other weeds is to pull the weeds out from under the hedge regularly when they are small and easy to kill. Or scrape them off with a hoe. If you leave them too long the roots get established and to dig them out will damage the roots of your hedge. Here is a video clip of what I needed to do when I left the weeds under the hedge I just planted get too far.

Well, this is how it ended up:



Before


After



(I know they all look completely lop-sided in the picture, but they're relatively straight in real-life).



I didn't dig a big, deep trench. I just took off about 2 inches around the top to get rid of the grass, weeds and give a cleaner surface to work with. I still need another plant as the wall at the front could do with one at the end (left side, out of camera shot).

I'll leave that now and just keep an eye on it. Water it, etc. i threw some chicken manure pellets in with them too when they were being planted (Im told this is a good thing to do with Holly once a year to keep them going?).

I know the place looks shabby as feck. The plan for early next year is to re-do the garden wall and the house exterior (old worn pebble-dashing that I want pulled off, and replaced with a smooth render, new windowsills, etc.) but I'm not sure what i'll do with the wall exactly. Naturally I'll be aiming to do something that wont interfere too much with the plants (I'm thinking of just taking off the broken and worn wall capping, getting a new flat top installed on it, and then installing a steel railing the whole way around, along with a new gate to freshen it up).

I just hope it won't interfere too greatly with the plants themselves.


Regardless, for the time being, I will leave them in peace and hope they grow out well. I'm hoping they'll be somewhat more of a bush in the next 12 months (perhaps too optimistic!?)

I also planted another plant, a climber that the lad in the garden centre referred to as 'montana', it's in the corner behind the holly plant. He reckoned this would climb up onto the wall a lot faster than the holly would, and by the time the holly grew up enough, that the lack of light getting to the montana (as the holly is blocking it) would kill the montana off. So he recommended it for just getting up on top of the wall that bit quicker.

Folks can I ask ye a quick question?

My garden is about 90% weeds I'd say. I'm not sure how to address that (except my thinking that if i dig down 3-4 inches and throw it in a skip, put new soil down, and grass seed, that that'll fix everything?) but if i was just to go a bit mad and spray weedkiller everywhere, but obviously making a conscious effort to not get it on the new holly i planted, would it still have an effect on the holly anyway?

I'd be afraid of overspray or such getting to my holly and killing it off..? But not sure how to go from a garden of weeds to a garden of grass.

looksee

If you could get a few biggish sheets of card or board of some sort and put them against the holly (just lean them gently on a not-windy day) you should be able to spray ok.

Lumen

KKV, those holly look very close to the wall. What distance are the stems from the wall?

Lumen

Lumen wrote: »

KKV, those holly look very close to the wall. What distance are the stems from the wall?

No more than 10 inches I'd guess. Idea is to get it over the wall as soon as I can so opted to go close to the wall (but not close enough that any of the 'branches' are actually touching it).

Lumen

Deleted User wrote: »

No more than 10 inches I'd guess. Idea is to get it over the wall as soon as I can so opted to go close to the wall (but not close enough that any of the 'branches' are actually touching it).

I don't know what sort of holly you put in, but common holly naturally grows to a very large bush or tree. It'll want to close that gap immediately, and then some.

Walls usually have footings which protrude out a bit, so it's not just root restricted in one direction, it'll may also have problems sending roots down. And it'll be in a rain shadow.

Hopefully it'll be OK, but you might want to move them back a fair bit away from the wall, maybe next spring.

Lumen

Lumen wrote: »

It'll want to close that gap immediately

You seem a bit clued in, so can I ask you, when you say that, what does 'immediately' mean (in real life?). If I never touched them, how long (theoretically) would it take for them to reach each other?




I'm under the impression I'll be waiting a year at least?

Lumen

Deleted User wrote: »

You seem a bit clued in, so can I ask you, when you say that, what does 'immediately' mean (in real life?). If I never touched them, how long (theoretically) would it take for them to reach each other?

I'm under the impression I'll be waiting a year at least?

I mean "immediately" in plant growing time. The speed of your life is of no consequence to a plant.

This all just my opinion so take with a pinch of salt. The most common mistake in gardening is through impatience creating a long term problem for the sake of a short term need. This is a mistake I've made and continue to make.

For example: planting in summer because the weather is nice, there's lots of light and the garden is screaming "fix me". Or growing massive shrubs like laurel in a small garden because you want to stop the damn neighbours looking into your garden right now.

A typical shrub has to work for you over a timeframe of a couple of decades. A good hedge is at least three feet deep, and that's small for a hedging shrub, given space most of them will grow to a couple of metres across. So you should plant at least two feet from the wall, which will promote healthy root development and give it a space to fill.

If you plant it 10 inches from a wall, within a couple of years (10% of it's useful lifespan) it'll be suffering from drought and/or a lack of space.

So you go from a useless small plant to a stressed, odd looking big plant with no significant period where it's doing what you want it to.

But you've planted them now, in mid-summer, in the middle of a heatwave, too close to a wall, so....? I dunno. Maybe they'll be fine.

As I said, everyone does this stuff. I planted a hedge last winter, 3 feet from a fence. Grand job! Except I took advice from people selling hedging and used too high a density, at 2 per metre, which will mean in a few years time they'll be overcrowded. Idiot, I am. But if I rip out every other one they'll probably be gappy, so now I'm just going to have to live with the mistake and hope the extra depth is enough.

macraignil

Lumen wrote: »

I mean "immediately" in plant growing time. The speed of your life is of no consequence to a plant.

This all just my opinion so take with a pinch of salt.

But you've planted them now, in mid-summer, in the middle of a heatwave, too close to a wall, so....? I dunno. Maybe they'll be fine.

As I said, everyone does this stuff. I planted a hedge last winter, 3 feet from a fence. Grand job! Except I took advice from people selling hedging and used too high a density, at 2 per metre, which will mean in a few years time they'll be overcrowded. Idiot, I am. But if I rip out every other one they'll probably be gappy, so now I'm just going to have to live with the mistake and hope the extra depth is enough.

I think you are being a bit critical of yourself there with saying 2 per metre is a big mistake. Hedge plants are planted at a density more than they would grow at in nature as that is what is required to make a solid barrier that is a desired feature of a hedge. They always need some trimming to keep them to the size required but weather they are 50cm or 1metre apart they still would be much more comfortable growing into full sized trees, (which could require for many hedge varieties about 10metres between the plants) but then that would not be a hedge.
Passed by a healthy old holly shrub on the western side of Inis mor on the Aran islands last week and it was growing with very little soil at all so I'd be inclined to agree with the sentiment that they should be fine where they are. In fact I would reckon moving them would cause more harm than good and I would not move them unless they were showing signs of poor health which would surprise me given the strong growing nature of holy plants I have seen in the past.

standardg60

macraignil wrote: »

I think you are being a bit critical of yourself there with saying 2 per metre is a big mistake. Hedge plants are planted at a density more than they would grow at in nature as that is what is required to make a solid barrier that is a desired feature of a hedge. They always need some trimming to keep them to the size required but weather they are 50cm or 1metre apart they still would be much more comfortable growing into full sized trees, (which could require for many hedge varieties about 10metres between the plants) but then that would not be a hedge.
Passed by a healthy old holly shrub on the western side of Inis mor on the Aran islands last week and it was growing with very little soil at all so I'd be inclined to agree with the sentiment that they should be fine where they are. In fact I would reckon moving them would cause more harm than good and I would not move them unless they were showing signs of poor health which would surprise me given the strong growing nature of holy plants I have seen in the past.

+1

There is no such thing as an overcrowded hedge if they're the same species..the pics look fine to me.

The green ones will grow a bit quicker than the variegated but that won't be a problem.