I revived an old grape in a thicket. Then, since I did not like where it was, I buried 4 feet of it in the optimal spot, while still attached to the main trunk. The next year I cut it from the main. It produces heavily now and it has for several years. You may lose two years but you will have it out of there. Though my advice is to cut the privet if it belongs to you. You can always replace it with something better behaved.

Common privet, Ligustrum vulgare, responds extremely well to even quite severe renovation, as do most other privet types. These plants will regrow from hard prunig down to just a few inches above ground. That may well be much more than you need to do but just illustrates what can be done. Now is not the time to do this. Late winter after the worst of the cold weather is past is ideal for a major pruning but you can do some tidying before that if the situation is intolerable. First, make a determined effort to rid the area/hedge from any weeds or under growth. I'd mulch after weeding/cleaning out both to keep additional weed growth to a minimum but also to conserve soil moisture and provide a little nutrient boost. Keep mulch away from direct contact with any wood stems. In mid/late fall you can groom the hedge, removing any overhanging or fountaining bits. These are very likely shading out lower growth and causing it to look woody and sparse. Ideally, hedges should be pruned in an 'A' shape - wider at the base and tapering up to a narrow top. This allows sunlight to reach all surfaces and should result in much more even foliar growth. In March or so, you can do a harder prune if you like to reduce size overall and to clean things up. Removal of any dead wood and some interior thinning should help to encourage new growth.

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.

First of all, don't worry about the little "hedge balls" (wry grins). People have to work very consistently to make those strange things happen. I've never figured out why they would want to.... One question that matters: Are these hedges in a lot more shade than when they were first planted? Are there large trees casting heavy shade? If not, then the hedges can be recouped. If so, let me know. (Wish I could stand there and take a look at the different hedges.... Here's the best I can do to explain the dynamics.) When you cut the aboveground parts back, the roots put out new aboveground shoots, as many as they can manage. Each shoot will try to grow "straight up" as fast as possible. When the shoots get to be about half the height you want the hedge to be, cut off the growing end, above a set of leaves. This will get that shoot to put out branches all along the stem. It will bush out, and continue to add more height as well. When it comes to the old woody parts of the hedge, it can be a balancing act. You need to leave *some* aboveground parts to feed the roots, so they can put out the new productive shoots. But you need to get the non-productive stuff out. If the old woody thick stems have younger sprouts coming up from the ground around them, then take a deep breath, and cut the old-thicks to the ground. If that part of the hedge is mostly old-woody, without much in the way of other younger shoots.... Gets trickier. If that's the situation, let me know. "Starting over" is not a crazy thing, but it probably would take at least as long to get something like decent hedges back. And they would not be your dad's hedges...