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chrisfin12_gw

Hedge row for privacy and safety

chrisfin12
12 years ago

I am at best a gardening novice. But, I am looking to plant a hedge row for a full sunlight area that will serve for both privacy and eventually to keep small children contained in the back yard (ie dense and 6 ft tall.

We are on the south shore of Massachusetts and are curious for best time of year to plant, types of plants best for this purpose and some local resource to investigate.

Thank you!

Comments (8)

  • ginny12
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    There are many choices for privacy but nothing that will keep children contained. Only thorny plants such as hawthorn are useful hedging material for keeping animals and people in or out. You certainly would not want to use thorny plants near children. A fence, hidden by shrubs or other plantings, is what you will need.

  • NHBabs z4b-5a NH
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I second what Ginny has said. (Shrub borders can be wonderful places for kids to play - secret houses under the branches are a great memory of my childhood.) You can go the route of a very basic fence like wire mesh with shrubs in a staggered row of shrubbery on either side of the fence to camouflage it and provide a thicker hedge and more privacy than a single row of shrubs. Or you can choose a decorative fence like a picket fence with shrubs on your side of it and perhaps lower maintenance perennials on the outside to give it a garden feel, or even just grass (though that will involve mulching or trimming around the fence.)

    In my experience early fall is the best time to plant shrubs. The soil is warm which keeps roots growing, particularly if you mulch after planting to help hold the warmth in and prevent freeze-thaw cycles through the winter, but the air is getting cooler so that there is less moisture getting pulled out of the plant. I have planted both deciduous and evergreen shrubs in the fall with 100% success. Our spring tends to be rather short and summer heat is stressful on the plants if I plant in spring. I find that they take longer to adjust and more work on my part as far as keeping an eye on water.

    As far as the hedge itself, you can choose to do all the plants the same which in my view tends to look more formal and a bit less friendly to the outside world. Or you can choose a palette of several plants that you like the look of together and use several of each along the length of the bed. Think about the color, size, and texture of foliage as you plan.

    http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/neweng/msg1208322318994.html
    The link above will take you to a thread with some photos of a bed I put together to serve as a boundary between a utility area and other parts of the yard which is the less formal mixed type. It's probably not as dense as you will want since I don't need privacy and wanted to mix in some perennials, at least until the woody plants got larger, but could be planted closer to make it denser sooner. I used Pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia), 'Fat Albert' blue spruce, two arborvitaes (Thuja 'Techny' and Thuja 'Sunkist'), ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolious Coppertina ), several rhododendrons, several Hydrangea paniculata ('Quickfire', 'PinkyWinky', and 'Pink Diamond') and shadbush/serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.) I like a mix of evergreen (conifers and broadleafed) and some of the denser deciduous plants like ninebark, forsythia, or some of the twiggier high bush blueberries which even without leaves aren't very see-through. I also planted some clematis to grow up through the shrubs for more flowers.

    The link below will show you a bunch of other mixed shrub hedgerows. I wasn't too successful at finding photos of borders of one type of plant that hadn't been seriously trimmed/pruned.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Shrub border Google

  • pixie_lou
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Growing up, the house across the street had a privet hedge in front. We lived on a high speed limit street - that house was one of the few houses where we were allowed to play in the front yard - since neither children nor balls would ever make it into the street.

    In my last house, I had a row of lilacs that were a gazillion years old. I guess a child could have gotten thru them, but it would have had to have been a very determined child.

    Quite a few houses in my neighborhood have hedges of forsythia separating the lots. Again, it would take a very determined child to get thru them

    I recently planted a row of arbor vitaes. I have a 10 year goal of privacy. Granted these will get a lot taller than 6 feet, but once they are grown in, I don't suspect children being able to penetrate.

  • ginny12
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    As the mother of very determined children, who had many very determined little friends, I have to repeat that hedges won't keep children in. I would never rely on them if safety is an issue.

    But I agree...hedges have many wonderful childhood memories for me too. My grandmother had a privet hedge at the back of her garden. The privet had been let go to reach its full height--no shearing. It was my own secret place, hidden in the privet, where I had dolls' tea parties with hydrangea leaves as plates. Thanks for bringing back the memory.

  • asarum
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    One image I have in my mind is of the properties I have seen where a row of the same tree has been planted to provide a living privacy fence, but then at some point something happens to one or more of the trees and you have this gap where the dead or broken tree sits. To my mind this is an argument for planting a variety of shrubs/trees.

  • diggingthedirt
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Not much to add to what Ginny and NHBabs have said, just want to agree that you can't rely on plants to contain kids except in the sense of "don't go past the hedge" - and bearing in mind that shrub borders and hedges are magnets for kids because they provide good hiding/playing/thinking places, away from grownup eyes.

    A very inexpensive and unobtrusive wire fence behind a shrub border works really well. Once the plants reach the height of the fence, it disappears, visually. You'd want something thicker than chicken wire - I think it's called "turkey wire" and you can even use metal stakes which don't require any digging. We've used 4' turkey wire behind a row of mixed shrubs with perfectly good results; we did use cedar posts and added a top rail, but that wasn't necessary.

    I love mixed shrub borders, rather than single-species plantings. If I were doing it over, I'd make sure to use several of each of a handful of species, making sure I didn't end up with one of each of a couple dozen types (sadly, that's a bad habit I share with a lot of gardeners!) I also wish I'd used a lot of blueberries in my shrub borders, because they're beautiful (and because I love picking the berries).

    For year round interest, include some evergreens, some plants with showy berries (like a deciduous winterberry holly), and some very early flowers (like wintersweet and/or winter jasmine). Also, you can use a mix of heights and shapes, maybe some tall Castle Wall holly, some rambling oakleaf hydrangea, and something more sprawling, like the native Sambucus nigra, repeating down the line. This could form your framework, and you could then intersperse different "one of a kind" plants in between or in front of those.

    Let us know what you come up with!

  • spedigrees z4VT
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I have no children, but as a determined child myself long ago, surrounded by determined playmates, I can say we certainly would have made our way through any hedge. Same goes for pets, that I *do* have. Little escape artists all. I, like others here, would put up a sturdy fence and plant a hedge in front of it for privacy or aesthetics or both.

  • EReiCT
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    we have a "wall" of Arborvitae between us and our neighbors, it makes an easy tall divider and I've wanted for a long time to go around the entire property with it like a fense. I'm not sure how this would contain children, it's doesn't contain the cat! The dog can't get through it though. they grow quickly and once they were well rooted we haven't done anything to them and they're great. one draw back, deer can find them yummy!