Best Evergreen Hedges For Privacy

Best Evergreen Hedges for Privacy

Broadly speaking, evergreen hedges can be grouped into formal and informal types in garden design terms.

• Formal evergreen hedges are clipped as often as necessary to kept them neat and tidy, providing an architectural frame for your garden and a backdrop against which your colourful flower beds can shine.
• Informal evergreen hedges are stars in their own right, with good flowers and often ornamental fruit as well. Because they need their flower buds to put on a show, you typically only clip them after they flower, which means that they spend most of the year looking quite shaggy.

Formal Evergreen Hedge Plants

These are clipped once or twice a year and are generally grown only for their foliage and tidy appearance, so it doesn't matter if you trim them before they flower.

• Yew - The King of Hedges, it has a reputation for being slow growing, which is great for low maintenance. The secret is not to cut the central leading stem until it reaches the desired height (unlike most hedges, where clipping all over is recommended); Yew's growth slows down considerably after you cut it.
• Western Red Cedar - Thuja plicata is a good alternative to Yew: not quite as shade-tolerant, and less forgiving, it can still be encouraged to grow back from old wood with careful treatment.
• Green Privet - The most reliable, easy-going, reasonably vigorous evergreen hedge.
• Holly - Prickles and a dark, brooding presence, unless you use a variegated variety, which can be electrifying.
• Laurels - All our laurels are great formal evergreen hedge plants; Cherry Laurel is the most popular due to its tolerance for poor soil and urban pollution, and vigorous growth.
• Leylandii - The most vigorous hedge plant around, it's a great choice as long as you clip it twice a year without fail - three is better! 
• Lawson's Cypress - Similar to Leylandii but less vigorous, with darker foliage. Two trims per year will be fine.
• Shrub Honeysuckle, Lonicera nitida - It's the most common hedge plant for car parks for a reason! It's not as pretty as the plants above but still a rugged choice for out of sight places

Special Mention:

• Box - Too slow growing (less than 1.5m per decade) to be a useful privacy hedge for most people, but it will get there eventually! Very shade & drought tolerant, as long as there is good air flow to decrease humidity. Classic choice for framing flower beds and lining pathways.

More Ornamental Evergreens (Variegated Leaves, Good Flowers or Berries)

Remember that you only get a decent amount of flowers if you clip your hedge after it flowers that year!
It sounds obvious, but if you clip your hedge before it flowers, you will remove most or all the flower buds.

• Pyracantha - One of the thorniest options in this list, big bunches of bright berries for later season interest
• Japanese Spindle (Euonymus) - Tall varieties such as Bravo and Ovatus Aureus
• Viburnum tinus 'Eve Price' - Late season flowers and good shade tolerance make this a popular choice for a more informal look. 
• Photinia Red Robin - On the fence between formal and informal, it needs clipping twice a year to produce flushes of new red leaves.
• Evergreen Berberis such as darwinii and julianae
• Choisya Sundance has lovely aromatic yellow-green leaves; White Dazzler is the hardiest variety, but doesn't grow much above 1.5m 
• Evergreen Euonymus - Tall Japanese Spindle varieties such as Bravo and Ovatus Aureus have brightly coloured foliage

Special Mention:

• Hypericum 'Hidcote' - This free flowering shrub makes a lovely informal hedge, but it doesn't grow to much more than 1.5m

Informal Evergreens

These evergreen plants look best when they are only clipped once per year or less: some are only pruned as necessary to control their size.

• Bamboo 
• Ceanothus