still confused.. what .... are you trying top challenge me??? ... lol in FL.. with an 11.5 month growing season... its going to grow a lot more... than it would in z4 WI.. where the soil is frozen solid for 5 months.. that isnt hard ... and you are closer to WI zone-wise.. than FL .. lol ... i think your biggest problem to getting a handle on this... is that one tag could have been printed in FL .. and one in WI ... WHY ARE YOU RELYING ON SOME TAG PRODUCED BY SOME TOTAL STRANGER ...??? [and that logic would flow to un-sourced web pages also] it will grow.. as it will grow.. in YOUR garden.. in YOUR soil.. in YOUR zone.. the way it will grow ... just plant them .. and dont worry about it ... sometimes the quest for knowledge.. makes one worry too much ... so you just end up doing it ... thx for the kind words.. and good luck ken

Hey Ann, long time no "see". :) I don't know if silver eleagnus (winter blooming eleagnus) is hardy in your zone but it makes a wonderful hedge. I've got it as a secondary hedge behind the leyland cypress so when that goes, there's still some privacy left. The first plants of it that I planted (gulp) 7 years ago are 10' tall now and they were only 1 gallon specimens then. I've rooted countless others since then as it's really easy to do. Stick a trimming in the ground in fall and it's taking off the next spring. A big bonus is that it blooms in late fall and smells divine. My black bamboo is supposed to be a runner, but in 5 years, it's barely grown 4' in width. It has matured enough to reach 15' high and the canes turn black though. It's lovely! A mixture of it and some white striped passalong clumping bamboo is the basis for a future "Japanese are" if I live that long. LOL! Another neighbor has some shorter holly planted boy/girl boy/girl in a close enough configuration that it all looks like it has red berries in winter. Only problem with it has been the invasion of the honeysuckle. Crawling around under a holly trying to get to the root of they honeysuckle is BAD job! Even on a "single point" holly! LOL! The absolute cheapest hedge you can grow is probably cedar. The ones I planted 16 years ago on this property are now 20' tall and totally screen the neighbors on one side. They were just tiny "bird droppings" plants that I harvested from the woods at the back when I planted them. Those are probably lining your property everywhere waiting on you to either mow them down or brushkiller them. The quick hedge would be the silver eleagnus in larger containers and plant the tiny cedars 15' away and then you'll have a 2 layer hedge with enough room to get in and weed out the blackberries and oak seedlings. Or, there's always poke salad. It's hopeless to weed out anyway, so go with the flow and use it's invasive evil properties! :)

For a supposedly unfussy plant,privets are a pain in the neck. We have about 60 feet of privet hedge, so I have an idea of what you're going through. I think that you have an older, mature hedge, and you are trying to keep it a specific shape which has no room for new growth; therefore, you are cutting off all the new growth and leaving the old framework, but with no glossy leaves. It looks like you have cut back into the bare internal branches in a couple of places. These will all try to grow again, only to be cut off again. You have a couple of choices. First, let the hedge get a little bigger - don't cut it back quite so far the next time. This will give you new growth for a little while, but then you'll be back to where you are. Second- cut the whole damned thing down to 8 inches or so and restart the hedge. I have done this twice in the 25 years we've been in this house, and I would gladly have done it more often, but my husband had a fit. Before you faint, let me tell you that I cut back about 30 feet of our hedge down to nubs last fall, and it is now about 30 inches high, fuller, better branched, and green. I have cut the new growth roughly in half twice, to encourage fuller growth. The plan is to let the hedge get to about 3 1/2 feet, and then keep it there, which means that at some point in the next year or so, I'll be cutting off all the new growth too. It's just the nature of privets. Oh, and an additional benefit is that you can really clean out the seedlings, ivy, newspaper wrappers and various stuff that has gotten stuck in the hedge. Obviously, the downside to the radical pruning is that you lose the privacy the full hedge gives you for a couple of years. Our hedge is more of a boundary marker than a real privacy thing, so we didn't mind too much; your situation may be different. You could do the big cut-down a bit at a time, and spread the full thing out over several years. If your hedge is as old as it looks, it probably doesn't need to be watered regularly, but you do need to see what the soil is like underneath. If there is a lot of ivy rooted there, the hedge could very well be extremely dry. If there is a maple tree close by, ditto. An asphalt driveway, a concrete driveway - lots of things can affect the state of the soil. The spots on the leaves could just be some kind of scalding from the sun, or maybe someone was spraying weedkiller or other chemicals nearby and it got blown onto your hedge.

That's a new one! I'll check into it :) Is there a reason to go Skip Laurel vs Prague Vibernum or vice versa? The major minus for the skip is that cost $40 a plant vs approx $10 for Green Giant or (the now ruled out) North Privet I'll be pricing Viburnum next :) Arbor Day tree finder also recommended purple Sand Leaf Cherry (prunus x cisterna) Any thoughts on that? I appreciate all the info-- I am trying to learn as much as I can before doing any work :)