'Hope'is the operative word here paulns. It sounds to me like a recipe for 'giblotte' as the Quebecois say, that is to say a 'dogs dinner' a mess.

Oh, how horrible! PLEASE don't try this!

Interesting! Before I start defending my idea, tell me more.

Here's a link to a website with some info on hedges. Training certain trees into hedges has been done in the UK for a very long time. Carpinus betulus (Hornbeam) is a commonly used tree, as well as the Fagus sylvatica (Beech) and Tilia cordate (Linden), all hardy in your zone.

A web search on hedges will turn up lots of sites, probably mostly from the UK, with info on how to plant and train this kind of hedge.

Here is a link that might be useful: link

I've heard of stooling short--multi-trunked trees--it's pretty common with red-twig dogwoods. In fact--I'll be stooling mine next February. Should have done it THIS February--but that was one of the things that DIDN'T happen. As I understand, one "stools" at 18"--the height of a milking stool--not at ground level.

There is a hedge of pleached beech not too far from here, that has been topped at 5'-6' (I pass it in my car--haven't measured it)--it's very pretty. I THINK it's beech, anyway.

That said--the beech and the red-twigged dogwoods were planted SPECIFICALLY for the purpose of pleached hedge/stooling. I'm not certain how it would work with random/naturally occuring trees...

I wonder if hedgelaying would serve you better? I've linked a site...hedgelaying is a traditional way of creating, well, hedgerows in the UK.

melanie

Here is a link that might be useful: hedgelaying site

'Coppicing' is a nicer word, eh? saypoint, your link led me to it - thanks. mjsee, there are some great before-and-after pictures on that website. Hedgelaying has always fascinated me. It's a little ambitious for what we need - and complicated. One of the things I'd like to try when I retire.

The border we're dealing with is wild, about 10' wide and ~100' long, all native shrubs and young hardwoods, blueberries, alder, viburnum cassinoides, some mountain ash. We've started planting other things in the gaps: hawthorn, a privet, a dogwood, rugosa roses. We don't care too much if it's a giblotte. We're in a hurry to fill it in as the garden is new and a lot of big RV's go by to the neighbouring campground.

Too late to do anything this year as you say - will aim for next February.

There's also the idea of stooling/coppicing and then growing native vines like clematis or honeysuckle over the suckers. Wonder how well a vine would do though with the tree sucking up much of the soil moisture...

inkognito j'aime toujours apprendre des nouveau mots, merci

Here is a link that might be useful: coppicing

Clematis and many other vines have shallow roots, so if you train them up a deep-rooted tree or shrub, and keep a thick dressing of rich mulch/compost on the ground, the vines will do very well.

I have an ash that popped up in a border years ago. I stool it each year and it is 2' high and bushy. Really, I just lop it down, but it might sound more horticulturally correct to say that I "copice" it, eh?

Well, I can tell you for certain--Japanese Honeysuckle will have NO trouble competing with roots. Nor would Chinese wisteria, or rosa multiflora---but I'm not certain you would want to plant ANY of those! I spend a fair amount of time fighting all three...though I will say this, when the honeysuckle and multiflora are blooming at the same time, it creates an unrivaled perfume. Add in a touch of fresh mown grass...HEAVEN. If I could bottle it I'd be a wealthy woman.

melanie

One reason for planting a hedge with one variety of plant is that they will all grow at pretty much the same rate. The plants in your hedge will grow at different rates and some will dominate swamping out others. In my experience, when a hole appears in a hedge it can be traced to something like a maple, ash or some other aggressive type that a bird has planted. Coppicing is not a hedging technique nor is it used as such, one obvious reason is that in the period after harvesting the branches you won't have a hedge until it grows back. Hedgelaying is by far the most efficient way of managing a mixed hedge but you need to be careful about your choice of species and grub out the unwanted. A hedge made with holly and hawthorn will be bull proof and be more than adequate at keeping wandering rv'ers at bay. Hazel is a good choice for hedge laying because you can cut it almost through near the base and bend it over, the new growth will be straight up and serve as pleachers for future years of laying. Of course this requires a quality that disappeared around 1950.

Thanks for these recommendations.

I see I haven't been using the terms right. 'Stooling' is a method of making suckers for propagating and 'coppicing' is a method for making poles. I can see why stooling to make a quick hedge would be considered a barbaric practice.

That said, ash and dogwood both sound like great candidates for my project. An overall effect of hodgepodge and wildness - nobody would notice. Very little landscaping goes on around here. One dramatic exception being a recent rash of covering a large slope in wood chips and plunking boulders on it, evenly spaced.

About vines - I will try them, though I still have my doubts about moisture - how much babying they'd need until established. I'm not worried about invasive. Many plants that are invasive in milder zones we are happy to keep alive here. A privet, a lonicera fragrantissima, an ampelopsis, some holly bushes - all around four years old, are growing by inches here, not feet.

Same with laying a real hedge - candidates need to be pretty thick around the trunk, going by pictures. Hawthorns take a long time to reach any kind of girth hereabouts.

If you want to try it, cut them off 12-18 inches above the ground. It's not the suckers, it's the side-shoots that would make the hedge.

Be prepared to LOSE a lot of them.

I'll try that with a dogwood..

Some trees can be hedged, some cannot. I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of such things, but I do know that some trees will die straight out if you cut them off at the top. Either do some research on the growth and pruning of your trees or be prepared to loose some, maybe quite a few. Seems to me it might be worth doing a little research because if you loose half of them and double the size of half of them you'll be no further along than you are now.

Any chance of stepping back here? I have just walked the dog over the field and through what was once a managed hedgerow. Farmers now need vast flat open spaces to aim their $10000.00 never to be paid for ironically named John Deere at and dog walkers are at risk.
What is it that you want to do paulns? In one way I think you should plant indegenous stuff and just let it be but are you trying to civilize this?

It is horrible because:

A) It will kill many of the trees and sicken many others.
B) It will look artificial and bizarre, not vaugely natural.
C) For the ones that survive, it would look like you TRIED to kill the trees that survuve the process and failed miserably.
D) You'd destroy the dimensionality of your border by being so preoccupied with only the eye-height--the collection of plants all cut brutally to the same height-range will look thrown-together and poorly thought out (as apparently it is, given that you PLANTED the trees and have now decided you'd rather have bushes).

If you want a hedge, plant a hedge. There are plenty of twiggy forms of dogwood if you must have dogwood AND a hedge, but don't hideously mutilate your trees because you've decided you want them to become something they aren't.

No, no, reyesuela, this border is wild, and native - but not old. It's regrowth from when it was cut maybe twenty years ago, before our time. Most of the land around it is rocky, hilly, wooded.
I'm going by past experience, cutting maples and birches to the ground and getting thick shrubby regrowth. We have about three acres we're actively working with out of a total of sixteen and this border is one project - not a top-priority one, until the neighbours with the broken muffler go by again, and now as the RV's start coming back, and then it becomes urgent - of a very very many projects. That's why I'm playing with ideas, and enjoying your responses. Obviously I need to do more research.
Our main objective is to get a thick wall of green as soon as possible, keeping in mind we're in northernmost Nova Scotia where things grow slowly.

With that much space to play with, I'd start some large evergreens right away for the future, and do the best you can for now with the existing vegetation. Later on you can remove anything that is unattractive as the new stuff gets larger.

A local conservation association in my area holds annual fundraising plant sales, with an emphasis on natives and environmentally responsible choices. They were offering bundles of bare-root evergreen trees, four or five different species, at a very reasonable price. Maybe there is something like that in your area?

There, I'd go after some (normally...) fast-growing conifers. Then you really would have a screen! If you have 16 acres and it's not right next to the house, they won't overpower it when they "grow up." Oh, and you can overplant and thin when they get bigger to prevent crowding but to get early screen. Just place carefully for future thinning.

Evergreens were my first choice actually - cedars would be beautiful. Dwarf Alberta Spruce are overdone in some places but not around here and I like them. But the soil is dry. I can't be buying plants (though check out the prices in the nursery list below). And I don't want to mess with pruning and shaping as I would for white spruce.

I went walking along the border yesterday and remarked, now that buds are opening, on just how many serviceberries/amelanchier are in that border. I doubt they'd take well to cutting back though. They are very pretty...

Thanks for thinking about this with me. This is a great forum - I'm usually on the soil forum but have been spending a lot of time lately reading threads here.

Came across this great website the other day. It has a good list of native shrubs, with descriptions, among many other things.

Here is a link that might be useful: MacPhail woods

Thanks for sharing that website. My husband and I honeymooned in PEI and a few years ago took our children back there for our 15th anniversary. There is a very tender spot in my heart for that island, but I was somewhat saddened to see how changed it was in the 15 year span. I hope this website indicates a greater movement to bring back to PEI what seems to have been lost.

Patty

Oh, I didn't mean "dwarf" anything! Colorado spruce spp., some hulking junipers, and that sort of stuff. They're cheaper, usually hardier, and grow faster. Of course, they can reach 30-60 feet, but like I said, on that acreage... And I'd never prune most conifers. *g* I'm not much into hedge-making. I'd just let them go wild.

Of course, if you plant anything, it will need to be watered for a while, which could be a problem for you...