Foragers hedge help please

[Guest]

Hi all,

I am planting a hedge and want it to be productive as well. I was just after any suggestions of plants you would put in or would like to see if you were hunting around.

On my wish list I have:-

Cherry plums
Crab apple
black thorn/ sloes
Elder
Hawthorn
Wild rose
berberis darwinii / barberry

Any suggestions or even tried and tested recipes would be great

[mothhawk]

How are you going to cut/prune the hedge? If by hand, I definitely wouldn't include blackthorn, far too thorny. Bullace and damson are a lot less thorny and IMO give better fruit with more uses.

I would add some holly, then you have your own Christmas trimmings, and holly makes a nice hedge.

if you want a hedge to keep animals/people in or out, then not elder, it makes a very poor barrier and grows faster than everything else, so will swamp other stuff unless you keep cutting it, but then you'll have no flowers/fruit.

[Two_Sheds]

Crabs & cherry plums are trees aren't they? If you pruned them to hedge height they may not fruit?


I wouldn't have wild rose unless you really want a wild look, or you love pruning. I've just taken out the lotty ones because they're far, far too vigorous and vicious. I cut them back twice this summer, and they're still waving high above their 7ft fence

[Guest]

I have about a 20m run, it is more of a privacy thing as the hedge is on the edge of a paddock and there is a neighbouring paddock (derelict) then a footpath so anyone walking down the path can see everything The wild look is fine and so is varying height. Tho point taken on thorns and hand cutting - it is amazing the things you don't think about

[VolesAteMyPeas]

Wild raspberries? Cobnuts or hazelnuts? The cobnuts round here make really thick hedges.

[Bigmallly]

How about a Berry Hedge...............Blackberry, Raspberry, Japanese Wineberry, Loganberry, Tayberry, Honeyberry, Tumbleberry, Gojiberry, Tummelberry............all underplanted with strawberries.

[Scarlet]

As said above, the crab apple and cherries aren't hedging. I have both in my garden, the cherries we eat fresh and the crab apples I use for preserves. They really are worth having. The crab apple trees look stunning at this time of year. Hazel nuts are great for hedging, and will give good privacy and a few nuts if you don't have squirrel problems.

The sloes are huge plants, I personally wouldn't bother with them. I have a few elders, but as said above, they grow huge fast but don't really give you much in return.
Hawthorn tends to throw out suckers everywhere!
If you've got a 20m length - that's a huge trimming job.
Perhaps a row of dwarf apple trees will be less work?

[mothhawk]

You can keep cherry plums as a hedge, and it makes a good one. If you keep it neatly clipped it won't fruit of course, but if you let it grow a bit wild and only clip it one year in 3 or 4 you'll get fruit on it.

[snakeshack]

Dog rose for hips


Sent from my iPhone using Grow Your Own Forum

[yummersetter]

Sloes are hellish, I left the ones in our hedge for gin purposes and they are sending out suckers up to fifteen feet from the hedge line and have encroached three feet a year into the orchard, swallowing three apricots planted six feet from the hedge. Digging them all up is no fun.

What about eleagnus? Umbellata has edible berries and is a nitrogen fixer, x ebbingei is evergreen. There are some interesting varieties of hawthorn, too, with edible haws for humans and wildlife.

[sparrow100]

My plot has a 15m blackthorn hedge on the south border. It wasn't trimmed for years and I took it from about 20ft down to 6ft. It's bushed out and top growth is about 4-5ft/year. The yearly cut-back actually isn't that bad, though obviously it fruits on old wood so that sends the berry production lower down the hedge. I do it by hand with thick gloves and it takes a few hours, but I don't have a problem with thorns. In terms of suckers, the roots are mostly lateral rather than deep, so I find they are relatively ok to pull up. Mind you I have beds next to it that I plan to thoroughly dig every 2 years, not an orchard. That would be a PITA.

My neighbour has trained his crab apple. Makes for a lovely 1.5m wide, 1.8m high screen.

PS My Norwegian cousins grow currant bushes as hedging. After a few years growth it's pretty dense, the birds can't possibly eat all the berries and their larders are full of jelly and cordial.

[Guest]

Thank you all. It sounds like a lets have a bash and be prepared for the worse case scenerio

[Zelenina]

Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) came up on another thread about plant ID, and that can be grown as a hedging plant. And did anyone mention Japanese quince?

Beware of elder. The flowers and berries are useful, but it can be very weedy wherever birds scatter the seeds. I don't mind having some of it in my garden, but it keeps springing up in places where I don't want it, and often in crevices where it's impossible to dig it out.

[Zelenina]

Some other things worth considering. (I've been looking them up because I want an edible hedge too):

Amelanchier - several kinds. Look for common names like service berry, juneberry, saskatoon berry or snowy mespilus.

Aronia

Sorbus species including rowan or mountain ash, service tree and wild service tree.

Hops if you want to make beer.

Mirabelle plums. Were they mentioned already?

Wild pear.

[Noosner]

As a couple of folks have pointed out, crab apple is indeed a tree, but you can use it as a hedging, though obviously it isn't very dense. I was at the RHS garden at Harlow Carr yesterday and they have some lovely crab apple hedges, about 4-5' high. They use Malus Evereste.