Advice on Beech and Yew Hedges

I'm renovating a neglected garden with formal beech and yew hedges.

At the moment they are 3m in height and probably 30 years old. The beech is extending 1.5m out from where it ought to and the yew has been overtaken in one part by an aggressive god-awful honeysuckle which I've cut at the base and managed to remove from parts of the hedge. Part of the yew is devoid of foliage.

Is there an opportunity to salvage the Yew hedge and how will it react to a hard pruning? Similarly for the beech;will it withstand a hard prune?

All and any comments appreciated.

THanks

magicbastarder

late summer/early autumn is not too bad a time to prune either of them; it wouldn't be a great idea to butcher them possibly, but yew is a rare conifer in that it can be pruned hard and bounce back. not sure if you'd want to take 1.5m off beech this time of year though, that's a bit more than a prune, maybe wait till feb or thereabouts for that.

the yew in the second pic does not look healthy though!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121037824#Comment_121037824

Thanks...that one was swamped by a type of honeycucke that just took over with tens of new stems running the length of the hedge from the original root. Cut and sprayed with glyphosate on the cut areas...hopefully it will do the trick.

standardg60

Now is as good a time as any for the Yew, and tbh i'd probably just do the Beech aswell and what recovers recovers (Beech don't like to be butchered at all) because it's as likely to be as dry and mild for the next 3 months as it would normally be from early June when you'd normally do it given our recent mild Autumns.

Furze99

Why did you cut out the woodbine/ honeysuckle? One of the nicest natural hedgerow plants that is just divine on summer evenings.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121039923#Comment_121039923

Not the common honeysuckle. It's an invasive Asian plant.

There are many varieties of honeysuckle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeysuckle

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121040158#Comment_121040158

This is the one common around here in rural ditches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_periclymenum

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121041438#Comment_121041438

Lovely plenty, he would have been laughing if he had that.

The Continental Op

Yew will take hard pruning but the traditional way to cut it back hard is to cut one side one year, the top another year and the other side on the third. This is the way some of the 100 year old yew hedges in old historic gardens are treated to keep them in shape. You can go right back to the main stem on one side but do it on two and you'll have tomb stones. Timing is not to important as this sort of work has always been done when time was available often in the winter.

If your version of hard pruning will leave green on both sides and the top then do it all in one go. The one side at a time is for when you are cutting hard back into old wood leaving no leaves.