Cut cut cut: that’s what it’s all about being a hedge owner.
With a typical hedge plant such as Hawthorn, Beech, or Yew, you are fundamentally maintaining a plant that wants to be a tree as a bushy shrub by cutting it regularly.
One of the most common questions we get asked is when to cut a hedge, and the answer is usually “when you have time, mate”.
The most important thing, as the expression goes, is “not when you prune, but that you prune”.
Cutting a hedge is what keeps it lush, and if you wanted to, you could trim it every time its shoots extend a centimetre or two past the line you are maintaining.
That is a bit too much work for most people, but the more you trim, the easier it is all round.
When an overgrown old hedge gets pruned, there are big woody stems to tidy up and either burn or chip.
The soft clippings from a regularly trimmed hedge, however, are easy to dispose of as mulch or compost. 2-3 times per year is great for most hedges, slower species like mature Yew are fine with 1-2 times per year.
The main exception is cutting a new hedge, which you want to grow as fast as possible. Cutting a new hedge in the “wrong season” won’t hurt, but it can slow them down more than you would like.
OK Thanks: Is October a Good Month for Cutting Hedges?
Yes, October is a great month for cutting most hedges, old and new. They are winding down for the year and storing energy in their roots, and deciduous species are dropping their leaves by the end of the month. Depending on how you dispose of your green waste, it may be more convenient to trim with or without leaves on the branches: the latter is ideal for new hedges.
The only hedges we don’t recommend cutting in October are
- Conifers (excluding Yew) in exposed, windy and cold locations
- Flowering hedges grown for their Spring display on the previous year’s mature wood, like Forsythia or Azaleas. They should be covered in flower buds at this time of year, and are ideally trimmed right after flowering.
The weather this October has been good for late season growth, which often means that hedges give a spurt of growth after you trimmed them in Summer.
Beech is a classic for this: you trim her on time in late-August or early-September so that she holds her leaves over Winter, and then she could do with another trim by the end of October to tidy all the stubbly late growth.