Sea Buckthorn Hedge Plants

Hippophae rhamnoides Hedging

Sea buckthorn is a large, thorny shrub that makes a great hedging plant for sunny sites on the coast. It tolerates chalk, poor, sandy soil and very exposed locations.
Sea buckthorn is good for tall hedges and can reach up to about 6 metres high when it grows freely.
Browse all of our other varieties of Buckthorn hedge plants.

Sea buckthorn hedge plants are delivered bareroot during winter (Nov-March) and pot-grown year round.
Bareroot bushes are cheaper than pot grown plants.
All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Spacing a Sea buckthorn hedge:

Plant Sea buckthorn hedging at 3 plants per metre, 33cm apart.
You can also plant Sea buckthorn at 6 plants per metre in a staggered double row, with 33cm between each plant along the row and 40cm between the rows.

General description of Sea buckthorn plants:

This tall, native shrub is very prickly, with big, tough thorns. The branches are stiff and upright, forming an attractive shrub or a dense, secure hedgerow. It has narrow, silver-green leaves that are adapted to cope with strong winds and salt spray. Its flowers are too small to have ornamental value, but they attract plenty of bees and ripen into thick clusters of orange berries that contrast beautifully with the light grey leaves.

View our selection of coastal hedging plants or see our full range of hedging.

Did You Know?
The berries are edible and high in vitamin C, although they taste quite sharp - a good alternative to lemon. We suggest blending them with other fruits into a smoothie.

They are a bit tricky to harvest: cutting off branches, freezing them, then beating them inside a sack before they defrost (which knocks off the berries but hardly any leaves) is a good method.

Only female Sea Buckthorn plants produce berries, and the plants we deliver will be a random mix of roughly 50-50 male and female. Female plants will start bearing fruit when they are about five or six years old, so the plants we deliver are too young for us to know which sex they are.
Sea Buckthorn is excellent for stabilising the loose soil on sand dunes and rocky slopes.

Growing Sea buckthorn plants:
This hardy shrub will grow in sandy or chalky soil right on the coast. It needs a well drained soil and is very happy on dry clay banks or hill tops. Because they fix nitrogen into the soil with their roots, they will grow in very poor soil on sand dunes.
They will not grow well if the site is wet or shady.

Prepare your site before planting:
Native hedge plants like Sea buckthorn are very tough. The only essential preparation is to kill the weeds in a strip a metre wide along the planting site: improving the soil should not be necessary. If your soil is exceptionally poor and dry, then digging in some well rotted manure and/or compost is worthwhile.

Watch our video on how to plant a country hedge for full details. The instruction to cut the plants in half after planting only applies to thorny native hedging and plants in the conservation hedge mix: this isn't necessary for Sea buckthorn.
Remember to water establishing plants during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Hedge Planting Accessories:
Prepare your site for planting by killing the weeds and grass.
You can buy a hedge planting pack with sheets of mulch fabric and pegs to hold it down.
If you are planting in an area with rabbit and/or deer, you will need to use a plastic spiral guard for each plant, supported by a bamboo cane.
If your soil quality is poor, we recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of new trees and shrubs.
You can also improve your soil with bonemeal organic fertiliser.

After Care

After you have planted your Sea buckthorn hedge, the most important thing to do is water it in dry weather. You will also need to weed around the plants. Watering should be thorough, so the ground is soaked. Let the soil almost dry out before watering again. Watering & weeding will be necessary for at least a year after planting.

Trimming Country hedge plants:
From the winter after planting onwards, your young hedge should be trimmed lightly once every winter, until it is mature. When it is fully grown, you can clip it at anytime.

Special notes on caring for Sea buckthorn hedges:
Sea buckthorn is a very tough hedge plant that shouldn't need special attention once it has established. If you didn't use a mulch fabric, it is beneficial to mulch around the base of the hedge each year.

Hygiene & Diseases:
Dead, damaged or diseased wood can be pruned off as soon as it appears.
Disinfect your pruning tools between every cut if there is any sign of disease.
Burn or dispose of any diseased material, do not compost it.

After you have planted your Sea buckthorn hedge, the most important thing to do is water it in dry weather. You will also need to weed around the plants. Watering should be thorough, so the ground is soaked. Let the soil almost dry out before watering again. Watering & weeding will be necessary for at least a year after planting.

Trimming Country hedge plants:
From the winter after planting onwards, your young hedge should be trimmed lightly once every winter, until it is mature. When it is fully grown, you can clip it at anytime.

Special notes on caring for Sea buckthorn hedges:
Sea buckthorn is a very tough hedge plant that shouldn't need special attention once it has established. If you didn't use a mulch fabric, it is beneficial to mulch around the base of the hedge each year.

Hygiene & Diseases:
Dead, damaged or diseased wood can be pruned off as soon as it appears.
Disinfect your pruning tools between every cut if there is any sign of disease.
Burn or dispose of any diseased material, do not compost it.