Welcome back to Garden Ninja today I'm
going to be showing you how to lay a
hedge. I'm showing you different methods
different styles of plants from bare
roots all the way up to pot grown plants
come on let's get cracking! So first
things first you're going to need a
number of key tools before you start to
plant your hedge so you're going to need
some canes so that you can measure out
distances either between plants or the
row of hedges that you going to lay. You
also may need a trundle wheel like this
which is used for measuring long
distances in meters it's really useful
if you've got a really long run of
hedging you're probably going to need a
tape measure for the smaller
measurements you'll need a strong garden
fork and likewise a strong sharp
hopefully cleaner than mine garden spade
trusty wheelbarrow for whether you're
using bare roots or container hedging
plants to move them around and also to
lift off any turf or spoil from the soil
that you're going to be excavating so
you need those basic tools and then
we're good to move on to plants. So here I am
in my own garden and this area is
brand new to be developed but the issue
is it's completely exposed so the wind
rushes in through this field and will batter
anything in this area so I need to put a
hedge in to help protect any garden or
design and I'm going to implement a bit
later on so hedging is really good
providing a break from the wind doesn't
stop the wind but it baffles it so
rather than a fence that sends the wind
over them crashing in it's a wind pocket
what the hedge will do is its wind will
hit it and then it baffles rooms would
help distribute the wind it's great for
the environment you get all sorts of
creepy crawlies birds and other animals
that we use the hedge for protection for
habitat it was look really nice so
that's the reason why I fitting a hedge
today so there are number different
types of plants you can use for hedging
I chose you at evergreen variety to give
me a bit of winter color and also some
interest behind me is Grisilenia
behind it there's a Hawthorn and that drops
its leaves in the winter it's lovely in
the summer there's lots of leaf are
quite tricky to prune where's with these
a lot simpler to keep the color and it's
a lot easier to start off with but also
used to really windy conditions they're
coastal plants so it's going to be
great for this aspect. They're not too fast
growing either so i've done my research I picked a
plant really suitable for the site.
because no matter what you if you pick
something that's unsuitable you will never
get to establish properly so go with what
works do your research then you're going to be
steps head when it comes to plant your hedge
Use your trundle wheel to work out the distance
of your hedge so you can work out how
many plants you will need. After that
I always use a cane to mark each meter
so that you can work out the spacing of
each other plants
so once you've measured out the boundary
of your hedge you then have to prepare
the ground it really is king it's a
matter of measure twice cut once able to
put loads of effort to making sure
giving your plants the best starting now
here we've got loads of turf basically
it's a paddock so what I need to do before I
can do anything I need to take
off this top layer of turf now you can
do it manually which i'm going to show you and
that can be quite back breaking and good
cardio great if you're not going to go
to the gym but on this scale probably
going to use something a little bit
faster I'll show you how to do it by hand
and then I'll move on to the heavy
machine first things first you can slice
through the top layer of the turf with a
sharp spade like this. This is where
you'll see it's a really good workout
and this is the same for getting rid of
any turf when you want to lift it so
what I'm going to do is cut the
outline of the turf that I'm going to
remove I'll show you with this small
example cutting through to a neat rectangle
Take you off top layer so most of these
roots are gone you don't want to leave too
much root in the grass may just grow back
So you're only taking off a slither like so
now you can either transplant that
somewhere else or you can turn it into
turf loam will show you next so what you
can do with all those sods that you're
going to be cutting off to get your
hedges this is simply lay them down
somewhere out of the way upside down and
what will happen is that the grass will
slowly die and then start to break down
with the soil that's attached to them
you'll end up with a really nice rich
loam almost a topsoil probably take a
good few months but you've got space
put it somewhere maybe the back of a
border out the way leave it to rot down
and then you've got free soil! Fantastic!
So now that we finished lifting all of
the turf you know where the hedge is
going to go I'm going to cultivate the
ground but again because there's a lot
of ground here to cultivate I don't really
fancy using a spade and a fork so
thinking of something a little faster
how many uses petrol-powered cultivator
so I've just finish the third pass with the
cultivator over this strip of ground as you
can see here it's broken up the ground
into quite a nice tilth slike structure
so that means that it's sort of like a
fine crumb, different sizes and which will
help with drainage. What you don't want to
do when you're cultivating is to over
cultivate the ground what that means is
that you've broken up the ground so much
it turns into a dust and it
could be far too free draining it would
damage the soil structure and the
plants will struggle so you don't want
that however on ground like this that's
not been cultivated in about 20 years
using a petrol cultivator can save loads
of time and effort so keep cultivating until
you get to the depth that you want and
then stop when you gets like a nice crumb
structure. So now that I've finished
removing the turf with cultivating the
land it's time for the fun part just
getting all these Grisilenias in so
what you're going to need is a fork and
spade we're going to go around and
measure out the distance between the
plants lay them all out and then start
to dig them in so the distance is really
important and it will depend on the
species fugly using so always check
something like the RHS website which
is a great resource for planting
distances. So once you've got your
hedge plants all marked out and you've
got the distance between them which will
start to plant. So I'm going to use this is an example
so what you want to do is mark the
position of the plant usually I just
give it a good squeeze into the soil
into the pot shape and then using a
spade first with a sharp clean edge you
want to dig out a hole twice as wide and
I usually go for a depth and a half and
pot as well take that out because you're
cultivated the soil this is super
easy now
now if you're planting bare root you need to use in a
different fashion so bare root plants
planted when they're dormant during the
winter months so you plant the bear
rooms closer together and there are much
smaller plant so they take a bit longer
to establish what the much cheaper but
it's probably best to watch that video
to really understand how to plant bare
root then once you've done that you get
your spade, no you don't get fork sorry you just
want to lose up the earth. The reason
you doing this so that those new roots
that the plants are going to send out can easily make
the way to the soil and establish if its all
compacted gotta really struggle and so will your plants
So take your plant tap around the
edge to loosen it off we carefully ease
it out you see here it's a really good
specimen you can see all the roots
they're not too root bound I watered these the
night before as you should do with all
new plants before you plant them so I'm going to
breakup up slightly. Then pop that in as you'll see
it's a bit too low down so what I need to do
is back filll looking a little bit more. You only want to plant
as deep as the top of the pot
when it arrives you don't want to bury
it or the stem will rot.
Breaking up any big clods if there are any left
and you don't want air pockets. You want it to
be really well packed in around the base a
good tip is using the back of your heel you
can just carefully around the base heel it in
making sure it's got good contact
with the soil and its not going to settle
or drop too much that's my first one in
looks pretty level to me and another tip
is not to add compost organic matter
into the trench when you're digging it
because what will happen over time is
compost will degrade and settle so with
hedging always put them in to quality
topsoil and subsoil don't have compost
to trench do mulch afterwards so i'll
show you that a bit later on but right
now I've got 299 of these bad boys to go
in so let's get a wiggle on and if I'm going to make
tea!
So there we go the hedge is finally in a
really long day lots of hard graft so
I'll see to do now before I go for a cup of tea is to
water all this make sure its any well irrigated with any new
hedge you need to make sure the first few
years it's well watered. There's no point
putting all this hard-working just let
them fend for themselves so I'm probably
going to do now actually is lay a seeper hose that I will lay around these hedge
plants so I can just turn the tap on for half
an hour every couple of days as the
weather depends keep these water so I've
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happy gardening!