Best Thorny Hedges For Security

Best Thorny Hedges for Security

Browse all of our thorny and prickly hedge plants; the lists below are the absolute spikiest. 

Thorny Evergreen Hedges

• Pyracantha - The champion of thorny evergreens, pyracantha is the real test of tough garden gloves. Great colourful bunches of berries in Autumn
• Berberis julianae & Berberis darwinii 

Special Mention:

• Shrub roses: Tall, thorny shrub roses make a perfectly decent hedge, although they generally aren't tall enough to give the privacy you need.
• Gorse, Ulex europaeus - Gorse is extremely prickly, grows well in sand near the coast and in poor mountain soils, and it makes a wonderful wildlife refuge, however it's not ideal for garden use in most places. It spreads aggressively via seed, and does not look as nice as other options.

Thorny Deciduous Hedges

You are spoilt for choice here, and to keep things simple we recommend our Blackthorn Based Hedge mix, or our even cheaper Countryside Stewardship basic mix of 2 species, which is 50% Blackthorn.
Blackthorn is even thornier than Hawthorn, which is the base of our Conservation Hedge Mix. 

• Blackthorn's long spines are much nastier than Hawthorn's relatively short thorns. Our Blackthorn Based Hedge mix is a great choice for a wildlife friendly native hedge, closely followed by the Countryside Stewardship basic mix of 2 species, our cheapest hedge pack.
• Wild Native Roses are effectively barbed wire plants, but they are sprawling shrubs that need to be interplanted with upright, woody plants such as Hawthorn & Blackthorn to maintain a well-structured hedge.
• Wild Ramanas roses come in white and pink-red; the more ornamental purple variety Roseraie De L'Hay is recommended for a front garden hedge. 
• Deciduous berberis - green, or purple 
• Elaeagnus angustifolia - Fixes nitrogen, so it's ideal for poor dry soils and the coast.

Special Mention:

• Sea Buckthorn - A wonderfully vigorous and thorny hedge plant, it spread via root suckers that make it ideal for stabilising sand dunes, but a bit too aggressive for most gardens.
• Bramble / Blackberry - Too sprawling to make a proper hedge by themselves, a bramble barrier is nevertheless impossible to climb through and makes a great wildlife refuge. You can add wild brambles, or thorny cultivated blackberry varieties, to any hedge to make it thornier and for the delicious fruit, simply cut out stems at the base once they have fruited in their second year and leave the dead canes where they are, don't bother to pull them out.

Browse all our Hedging Plants.