When Can I Plant A Beech Hedge?

Hedges are usually made with short clusters of shrubs and not tall trees. But hornbeams and beeches are some exceptional examples of trees that can be used to make hedges. Beeches, however, are deciduous trees and lose their foliage during the fall and winter seasons. So they are best planted in the spring or summertime and can be pruned hard and on a regular basis. Firstly, the trees and the location for planting them has to be selected. It is best to opt for trees having straight trunks. It is easier to adopt techniques such as balling and burlapping, making the trees barefoot or containerising them if the trees have straight trunks. The ideal spacing between the trees in a line should be about three feet apart, so you can ensure that they are in a perfect alignment with each other. The alignment is done by attaching two poles to a guideline and erecting these poles at both ends of the hedge. The trees should be regularly watered and allowed to settle in during the first year. Pruning should only be done in the subsequent years. Tree pruning needs rigid guidelines because they are to be done in a very formal and structured manner and with a great deal of precision. Pruning shears and loppers are used to prune and cut the branches that cross the guidelines.

In the second year of growing your hedge (that is, the first year after it has been planted), it is advisable to prune about two-thirds of the branches to ensure a thicker growth. Two branches will grow back in place of every one that has been sheared and the tree will thicken up as time goes by. It is necessary to prune the tree several times in a year to ensure that it does not grow wild. The ideal height to be maintained for every beech tree in the hedge, though there is no thumb rule for that as such, should be about one-and-a-half to two feet tall.