Reduction is cheaper and keeps your screen. Replacement costs more and takes years. Sometimes replacement is still the right call.
Reduce where the species will regrow from where you want to cut. That covers yew, privet, beech, hornbeam, laurel and most native hedges.
Consider replacement where it will not — chiefly conifers that have outgrown their green growth — or where the hedge is failing, bare-based beyond recovery, or simply the wrong plant for the position.
| Situation | Usually |
|---|---|
| Yew, privet, beech, laurel, hawthorn — overgrown | Reduce |
| Leylandii, still green where you want to cut | Reduce, within the green |
| Leylandii, green only at the very top | Replace |
| Bare-based for years, no low growth | Replace, or replant the gaps |
| Dying, diseased or half dead | Replace |
| Right plant, wrong size | Reduce |
| Wrong plant for the position | Replace — you will keep fighting it otherwise |
| Roots damaging a wall or drive | Take advice; often replace |
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There is often a third option nobody suggests. Reduce what is worth keeping and replant only the failed sections. Or reduce now, live with it for two or three years while a new hedge planted in front or alongside establishes, then remove the old one. It is slower and slightly fiddlier, and it avoids both the permanent brown wall and the years of open boundary.
See what our hedge maintenance service covers in Keynsham, or read more about the service across the areas we work in.
Reduce where the species will regrow from where you want to cut — yew, privet, beech, hornbeam, laurel, natives. Consider replacing where it will not, chiefly conifers past their green growth.
It will not reshoot from bare brown wood. If the green growth is only at the very top, reduction leaves a permanent brown wall.
Three to five years to a decent screen, depending on species and planting size. That gap is the real cost of replacement.
Removing the old hedge, dealing with stumps and roots, improving exhausted soil, planting, and watering through the first year or two.
Yes, and it is often the best — reduce what is worth keeping and replant only the failed sections, or plant a new hedge alongside and remove the old one once it establishes.
Match growth rate to the maintenance you will actually do. Yew for formal evergreen, beech or hornbeam for deciduous, native mixed for wildlife, laurel for fast dense cover.
Usually not, after years of shading. That is one of the situations where replacement or replanting the gaps is the honest answer.
It is the obvious moment. With the hedge out the boundary line is fully accessible, which it will not be again for years.
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