It is that time of year, when we love spending time in our gardens, the barbecue and deck chairs are out as the gardens are bursting with colour and vigour. 

In the last few weeks Yorkshire and the East Ridings have enjoyed the start of summer with lots of sunshine and warm weather.

Its not just us who enjoy these conditions!

After all the rain we have had through spring has soaked into the ground, vegetation and hedges are shooting up. Our summers tend to be quite short and its important to maximise the pleasure we can have in our gardens.

Hedges can be a number of things:

  • functional boundaries 
  • provide screening
  • soak up noise 
  • shaped boundaries (full of wildlife)
Hedges do require maintenance to ensure they look smart and do not fall out of condition!
 

Now that the risk of frost has passed and your hedge has burst into life, a maintenance trim to tighten and improve the form is a good idea, particularly now your spending so much time looking at them.

There are a number of considerations when deciding when and what your hedge requires. Conifers must not be cut back to far; if they are trimmed past the green they will remain brown and unslightly. Trimming laurel with hedge cutters can leave messy rips on the leaves, which brown off and can look a mess in the short term, untill the new growth pushes through. You may want to consider waiting untill certain hedges have finished flowering before trimming, like hawthorne and privet to make the most of the colourful blossom.


If your hedge is starting to steal your sunlight or become a nuisance they can be reduced in height and width, which then makes them more practical to maintain, while improving the amount of sunlight hours you or your neighbour may be able to utilise. Maintenance trimming is usually carried out around May/June and then again at the back end of the year when its finished doing its growing.


If you are considering doing any work at this time of year it is important to check that there are no birds actively nesting in your hedges.

It is offence under the wildlife & countryside act 1981 to damage where wild birds are nesting.