laurel bushes

hello everyone, apologies if this post appears twice i have been a bit confused about where to post things correctly!! Anyway, we have planted some laurel trees in february of this year which we hope will form a nice dense hedge in a few years time. My question is when will we for the first time need to give them a little trim in order to keep them nice and thick at the bottom. There is quite a lot of new growth on them. Please help, many thanks.

 

I topped mine this year as they had reached the height I wanted and now they are bushing out lovely. Some strategic sectatuer cuts to level out the front on the hedge also improved its bush. Once it has a uniform shape about it I intend to use hedge cutters. You are supposed to mostly sectatuer cut laurel but that it a pretty tall order for a big hedge and it grows that well that the half cut leaves soon diappear as the new foliage grows.

BM

 

If they are already good bushy plants then you do not need to do anything, but if they are single stemmed ones then pruning to force branching from the base is a good idea. Cut each shoot back by about a third, now would be ok.