Hawthorn hedge

Ok i have a hawthorn hedge, its about 9ft high 23m long and very see through, its in really bad condition at bottom(bare, weeds etc) i bought stuff to build a fence and was going to rip it out, problem is i have bad neighbours across the street and hedge blocks them off, my wife now wants me to put the new two meter high fence in the inside and leave the hedge up so 3 feet is still above fence and it will stop anyone getting through, is this a good idea? what would happen to the hedge? would it die off?

thanks mark

 

Have you thought of having the hedge "layed"? That will thicken up the bottom, reinvigorate it, but it will be shorter once layed - so take a couple of years to get back up to 9' - I would think that a layed hedge would be about 4', and I guess they grow 1.5' to 2' per year.

http://www.hedgelaying.org.uk/styles.htm

 

I'd say lay it too. You can combine the impenetrable nature of a Hawthorn hedge with quick growing privacy by putting some Hazel among it.

 

A good Hawthorn hedge layered and well looked after is very smart and nothing will get through it,

 

"I consider layering to be a skilled task"

Yes, I agree absolutely. Unless you are planning on a new hobby, or even a paid-skill!

 

I guess it depends on how you want it to look, and what purpose it will serve. My dad taught me the basics, after he'd been shown by an old farmer. Neither my dad nor I would ever win any competitions but we can make a it work well enough to thicken up leggy hedgerow.

On my little piece of countryside, we just chainsawed away one side of each tree, carefully cut into the base at a 45 degree angle (so that the uncut side is the side that we trimmed the branches off, then gently pushed it over and tied it to the next one, and so on down the line. There are big gaps in my hedge at the moment, but not because of our handiwork. Some of my trees were completely dead and half rotten, so we lifted them out and replaced them with some rabbit food (I mean tree saplings that were promptly eaten).

Hawthorn also regrows from a stump, so in some parts we just chopped the whole tree down to about 2ft of stump. Last time I checked (a few weeks after we'd done it) they were greening up nicely with lots of new side shoots.