My favorite informal hedge is the one I have in my front garden - firethorn. Can you grow this in NM? An absolutely fantastic hedge for my climate. It has it all - evergreen (good for privacy), prickly (excellent for security purposes), low water consumption (grows wild in fields and along highways here), tiny white flowers in Spring, loads of berries in Fall and Winter, a much appreciated source of food for birds during the colder months. During Winter mine usually teams with birds stripping the berries one by one until none is left around late February.

In another part of the garden I have created not so much a hedge but a living wall of green. I have a mix of shrubs, including roses, and they now form a virtually impenetrable barrier. So much so that DH suggested I should trim it with the hedge trimmer instead of individually pruning with secateurs! I think I'm going to follow his suggestion :-) Some of the plants that I used for that purpose are viburnum tinus (laurustinus), oleander, photinia, dodonea viscosa purpurea, strawberry tree (also grows wild in my area), buddleia, and a couple of roses (the china Old Blush and the moss William Lobb).

Laurustinus will make a very nice, more formal hedge if you want, and has the added bonus of white flowers in Winter. It's also a perfect backdrop for colorful flowers or bark. Lavender is also a classic and it's hard to beat a lavender hedge for a cottagey look.

As for roses as an hedge, if evergreen is not a concern, then you should be able to do it, as there are so many ones to choose from. Depending on the height of the hedge you envision, you should choose the roses. Some time ago I remember seeing a photo in the Antique Roses forum of an Archduke Charles hedge which was very pretty. And Dawn, who used to post here, planted an hedge of Mrs. B.R. Cant. I have personally toyed with the idea of creating an old tea rose hedge in shades of pink and yellow - maybe using Duchesse de Brabant, Lady Hillingdon and Mrs. Dudley Cross. No room for that unfortunately...

There are so many great roses around, I believe the only problem will be to select the ones you prefer and do well in your area.

Eduarda

Tall grasses work for a hedge effect. I use vetiver grass, not hardy for you, but any tall grass should work, if you don't mind green hedge summer, tan hedge winter and the cutting back early spring.

Taller floribunda roses might work. 'Gene Boerner' -- five feet tall -- mixed with loropetalum have turned into a hedge for me.

Some of the southern evergreens like gardenia and azalea that are hedges for me won't work in your climate, but I've seen nandina hedges that were stunning when the leaves turned red in winter. Nandina loses its leaves at 10 °F. Stems are damaged at 5 °F, but the plant usually recovers fast. Careful pruning must be practiced. It is best to thin out old stems every year or head back old canes at varying lengths to produce a dense plant.

I do love a rosemary hedge around an herb garden.

Nell

Do you want a formal, clipped hedge or a loose, carefree hedge?

We use osmanthus fragrans. Not sure if it works for your zone. It's fragrant in the spring and fall. It's evergreen, it takes to shaping every which way you like. We've got a hedge started on the west side of our house, but those were just planted last fall. It will take a few years to fill in. We have more of these on one side of the path in the butterfly garden. It can take full sun, and it can handle drought once established. It can also take moist soil and part shade.

I also like rosemary and ornamental grasses in a mix for a hedge.

Cameron

For a cottage garden, my preference is to keep all plantings loose and informal. I just don't think anything too repetitious and of the same color, especially green, says cottage. I'm not big on a hedge of anything except roses for cottage style but if I were to do one it would definitely be a mixed hedge, with all plants having a loose, informal habit. Of course, as with anything or style, YMMV. : )

As for shrub roses, many can easily attain six feet in height in So.Cal. Even in my cooler So.Cal. gardens my BP Iceberg gets to that height and requires a few trims during the season. In my friend's gardens in O.C. they get 7-8 ft. tall. She cuts them down in March and July with an electric trimmer. lol!

I have a long bed along part of our fence out back that is planted with buddleia in various bloom colors. I consider it more screening than a hedge. Inter-planted around their feet and in between I've mixed in rudbeckias, coneflowers, gaillardias, hollyhocks, shastas, and salvias. Cosmos and snaps have found their way into this bed, as well, via the birds or the wind. No roses YET. ; ) This is a young bed so I'm still waiting for it to get that full and blousey traditional cottage look. Maybe next year. : )

Good luck with whatever you plant. Keep in mind the water needs of all the plants if you inter-plant.

Diana

We have many Ceanothus and shrub rose hedges here.
Holly is also popular as is Cotoneaster and Viburnum Tinis.

Libby

My father-in-law had an amazing lilac hedge at his summer home in Estonia. Wiah I could find a picture.

Mostly I brought up the topic for discussion because of that beautiful Russian sage hedge somebody has in town. But I do want to do some batch plantings for dividing parts of the yard. Shrub roses are probably my best bet in this climate.

Eduarda, we do have pyracantha here, what you call firethorn. I tried one, unfortunately it died. I do have a mass planting of roses near a wooden fence. I planted them in a staggered J-shape, which I hope will be attractive when they mature and fill out.

I'll have to look up osmanthus fragrans, never heard of it. I like an informal look. I'm doing the Ceanothus down one side of the very long, wide driveway. There used to be a row of Lombary poplars there, but they were dying of old age so I had most of them taken out.

There is one native bush, Four-wing salt bush, which grows wide and about five feet tall. It makes a nice screen, and it flowers for a long period. I've got quite a few of them.

I had a couple of chimney sweeps working here this afternoon. They commented on how much the area has been growing. I asked them if they had seen many gardens. They said no.

I cleared a fire break outside of a wood fence and around the propane tank this morning. The native grass tussocks are prolific and not particularly ornamental. There is an amazing crop of goatshead stickers sprouting out there. I'll have to spend a few hours turning earth to kill those sprouts. I was daunted by the number of sprouts in the house yard, but I hadn't even considered that they are also sprouting in the wild part of the property. UGH! I have to tackle them because they are invasive.

Lorna

Cameron's suggestion of rosemary and ornamental grasses mixed for a hedge gives me a notion to try rosemary and cymbopogon. A very fragrant hedge, rosemary and lemon.

BTW, Osmanthus fragrans is hardy to zone 7b, according to Floridata. I'd never seen tea olive until I came farther south. Then I didn't see it, I SMELLED it, LOL. I searched all over that lady's yard to find it and then carried a sprig with me to ask the rest of my patients if they knew it. I only have one that I bought, I did not find it easy to root.

I disagree about hedges not being a cottage look. Many real country cottages here have a little hedge: boxwood, privet, euonymous, even camellia or azalea hedges. Maybe cottage, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I think the reason I've seen so many beautiful cottage gardens in this part of the country is that Passalong Plants are handed off with affection. Shrub trimmings stuck in the ground root, and there grows another garden.

Nell

I like a mixed border hedge because I am not a formal person at all - I am starting a new one that will consist of shrub crepe myrtles - they are very easy to start from seed and grow fast, wygelia, gardenia, some ornamental grasses, rosemary and whatever else suits me at the time.....

Lynne

I've mostly gotten rid of my sunflower hedge as it was becoming wildly invasive. The Max's really took off here, apparently loving the clay. I interplanted Silphiums (rosin weed/compass plant), which weren't as bad, but they were thuggish after a few years. Their roots grow very deep. I've left some scattered clumps (aka "giving up"), but I'm watching them like a lazy distracted hawk.

Johnny is disliking the Scotch thistle and fuller's teasle I have planted with Poncirus 'Flying Dragon'. Only the hardy bitter orange is perennial, but right now nobody with any sense is coming near that bed, which had a history until now of getting trampled. (We had someone light firecrackers on our porch, so next year the thistle and teasle will be growing near the windows. Johnny already put in cameras.)

I've tried grasses, but only the Miscanthus species have done well. There again, one large clump of M. floridus is proving difficult to get rid of. Some is still growing, in mid-air, in the compost. I did plant some along with Arundo donax (giant reed) around the chicken run for shade, the hens can tear both of those up as much as they want.

Ironweed (Vernonia) has been a good mixed hedge plant, it's not invasive here. I've had some tall asters do well too. The taller goldenrods have been something of a mistake as they reseed like crazy. Who knew goldenrod could be such a weed? ; )

I've been admiring my still young hedge along part of the back yard this year. I've mixed various elderberries with a butterfly bush, a chaste tree, one of the jujubes, two Decaisnea bushes (deadman's fingers), a short persimmon, and a serviceberry tree. It's coming along fairly well. The elderberries would be less manageable if we had more rain I think. I would have an Illinois Everbearing mulberry too if an otherwise cute groundhog hadn't eaten it.

A hedge along part of the front is proving more difficult. I planted a dwarf oak to anchor one corner and hopefully the che fruit trees will continue to fill in part of that hedge. I'm still trying to get something else to fill some gaps (I'm still trying to find something that will LIVE, I don't lack for ideas).

Another line of hedge is mostly cherry bushes and assorted other bushes with similar heights with tall flowers in between. Honestly, it looks like a big mess now. I'm thinking I may just go with mulch between the maturing bushes or one very short ground cover. Once the bushes get a few more years on them, it'll look less like a scraggly line of weed trees.

We can grow rosemary here, but it never really gets all that large (the largest bush I've seen locally was maybe 3' tall). I think that or Russian sage would be gorgeous. Good luck with the Ceanothus, I keep hoping some brave gardener will try some around here. They do sound tricky. I bought an Osmanthus to try here, I figure it'll survive a mild winter.

kent

Goldenrod tends to send out stolons, too. It's not well behaved.
If you like ironweed, you might like Verbena bonairensis, too.
They tend to resemble one another and the V. bonairensis, said to be a bad reseeder, is not so for me.

Did you see the discussion about the driveway monitors in Steven's 'Stop Thief!' thread?

Nell

Hedges of Photinias are used a lot around here, sometimes in lieu of privacy fences. The downside is that, untrimmed, they can reach heights of 15 feet or so. The pluses would be the fact that they provide a very thick screening, and stay evergreen (if that's what you're looking for.)

I have a neighbor that has a very thick and tall hedge of Photinia between her house and the privacy fence which runs between her property and her next door neighbor's. She has carved an entryway in the photinia(almost a tunnel) through which you pass to get to her backyard. It's very unique!

Marilyn

I like photinia, Marilyn, but the rabbits keep eating mine down to nubs. The idea of mixed hedges is a new one for me. It wasn't something I had consciously considered. But I planted a privet next to a Four-wing salt bush, so I was moving in that direction.

Kent, do you grow wild indigo? I recently read an article about it. For those who like delphiniums, but have no luck with them, the article stated that wild indigo is a great substitute.

Lorna

Lorna, take a look at Pappu's rose hedges. Have some tissue handy. : ) Note the zone these roses are grown in.

Diana

Here is a link that might be useful: pappu's roses

WOW! That lady certainly likes hedges!! Incredible!!! Thanks, Diana :-)

Lorna

Nell- Yes I saw, somehow the cut flowers make me more mad, although our house catching on fire would have bummed me out. I was thinking low-tech, like bear traps, but J is going with security lights and cameras. For my money, nothing beats a well placed bear trap.

Lorna- I do grow Baptisia. It seems to take a few years to really get going, but it's worth it. Of course, it's herbaceous. I have a couple in my mixed borders. I tried true indigo this year also, but I've been busy too often to really water anything, so I think most of my seedlings have perished. One I stuck in the "wrong" place out of desperation is thriving, naturally.

WOWser! Those roses that Diana linked to are nothing less than amazing! At first I thought it must be a public garden, then I saw that it's a home garden! I can't imagine, it's beyond my imagination due to my garden pests...deer and Japanese Beetles.