Hedges, Screens and Privacy Borders
Installation, Upkeep, Maintenance and Replacement with Natives Plants
Everyone knows what a hedge is, but it is simply a row of plants made more or less into a wall.
I have vast experience maintaining hedges! My primary job when I started to landscape was crawling underneath them for entire summers, weeding and cleaning leaves.
I also have a lot of experience trimming them to the desired shape and I strive to go exactly for what my clients are looking for. You can trust me to get all of your trimming needs done!
Maintenance
Installation
I can install screens to help hide things on the property like air conditioning, electric boxes. As well as provide privacy from roads and neighbors.
Before Installation, a consultation will be held discussing where you want the hedge and what plants best suite the site.
A different way to hedge
Native Hedges, Woodland Screens and Transitioning Hedges of Invasive Plants to ones filled with Natives
Transitional Hedges
Most hedges consist of a row of plants ussualy a single species. The species commonly ascosiated with hedges today are: Privet, Burning Bush, Barberry and Arborvitea.
The first 3 of these are noxious weeds that spread into our woodlands and wreak havoc on the natural communities that rely on them. If you have one of these 3 its not the end of the world. We can do the work to replace them or start to phase them out by adding natives to the row and promoting them. How promoting plants in hedges is by selectively pruning the unwanted shrubby away from the wanted. As the new plants grow to a good size, the unwanted hedge shrubs will be removed. This overtime will transition your hedges away from the non-native and invasive plants to native ones that will promote biodiversity, wildlife and offer color both with flowers and fall foliage.
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Native Hedges
These are exactly how they sound. A hedge made up of a single species or a few species of native shrubs that grow locally.
Why natives?
(skip if you already know)
Well invasive hedge shrubs are starting to dominate the understory of our local natural areas and woodlands. How they do this is by having a lack of checks and balances that control them in the ecosystem. So, they outcompete native plants already there by never being eaten by caterpillars or deer. Eventually entire diverse plant communities get replaced by a single species of one invasive plant. To prevent this and allow our natural areas to heal we need to start planting native plants.
Woodland Screens
A woodland screen is a hedge or privacy barrier made up of a diverse array of native plants, think of a woodland but a thin strip bordering your property. From herbaceous forbs to trees and shrubs. This type of hedge requires the least maintenance with only trimming and weeding needed.
Hedging in this style promotes the most biodiversity and wildlife habitat by allowing all layers of the forest to exist within the hedge. Another cool feature about this style of hedging is that it is constantly changing with different plants blooming at all times of the year, a mosaic of fall foliage and with time, new plants will move in from local woodlands adding to the diversity already there.
This style of hedging merges with woodland gardening after a while, with similar maintenance regimes.
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A projected timeline of a woodland screen:
1-2 years: Freshly planted and mulched, some cover and blooms over the seasons.
2-6 years: Trees and shrubs start to fill in and a shady ground layer forms, maintenance is reduced each year as hedge gets established, new plants from nearby start to move in and spread
6+ years: The hedge starts to reach a balanced state with trees growing a few feet each year and the privacy border getting thicker, road noise is greatly decreased and maintenance is very low, with maybe 1 visit a year to check up on things.