The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

15 Basic Ways To Landscape Your Homepage

Hedges

HEDGES ARE plains grown close to gether in rows with branches intermingling to make each plant indistinct.

With the addition of new and more colorful plant material, hedges have evolved from forbidding barriers to serve more aptly as living screens of privacy.

Carefully selected and properly planted hedge plants can be put to many practical uses; giving life, beauty and dignity to the average home grounds. They provide colorful enclosures for a private outdoor living room, or an ornamental backdrop to accentuate a flower border. They often sustain the overall landscape picture when more seasonal plant material has faded.

Tall screens are invaluable to blot out unsightly objects. Low hedges are useful as friendly property line markers, edgings for walks, or as low borders in front of shrub groups. Others serve to protect planted areas from animals, drifting snow, sand or wind.

The most important consideration in selecting plains for screens or hedges is to first decide which of many purposes the hedge will serve. According to your personal needs, hedges may be in a straight row, curved or angled. They may be regularly clipped or allowed to develop naturally and the material used may be deciduous or evergreen, colorful or monochromatic.

Buy only reliable nursery stock grown for hedge purposes. Uniformity is important and new plants should be similar in size, shape and root development. It is wiser to buy young plants because they are most economical and are more easily trained.

When planting it is usually best to dig a running trench instead of individual holes. For an average size screen dig about 11/2 feet deep and a shovel width wide. Replace with good top soil or a soil mixture of peat moss or compost. Spring planting is generally best to gain a fast start.

Plant roots should always be kept moist until planting time by burying (heeling in) the roots in moist soil. Planting width caries according to the material used. Allow plenty of space for young plants to mature. Find out the ultimate height to which it will grow before you plant any hedge material. Then you will not interfere with your own or the neighbor's view, walls, driveways or walks and paths.