Gardening week ahead: Help with a hedge problem
The fondness of gardeners for growing climbers up old and dead trees is understandable when you think about it. What could be more natural? After all, our wonderful old bluebell-carpeted woodlands are littered with glorious entanglements of native honeysuckle, wild roses and ivy, either clambering aloft or slumped over mossy stumps. Why should we not hanker after the same look in our gardens?
Emailers Lee and Tom Sherry want to grow roses over a 12ft-tall branching stump of an apple tree central to their garden, and would like to know if they should “treat” the stump beforehand, while Ion Trewin, from Norfolk, has set his sights on smothering a dead monkey puzzle tree with something glorious, to form a dramatic backdrop to his duck pond.
I really should advise these readers to go into things with their eyes open, however. Firstly, they should try to ascertain why these trees died because, to highlight a worst-scenario problem, they may be harbouring honey fungus. Rashes of midsummer orange toadstools around the base of the stumps or in the area above the root system might indicate this. Old stumps can act as hosts to this fungus, which can travel via underground rhizomorphs and kill nearby trees and shrubs. Privet hedges are notorious for being the first local casualties in gardens, and garden owners are always advised that it is “best practice” to remove dead trees and as much of their roots as possible, rather than make a feature of them.
Even if there is no sign of honey fungus, and gardeners decide to adopt the familiar “Oh, what the hell, life is too short” attitude, growing climbers up dead trees is not without some medium-term complications. The roots of the stump or tree will naturally rot away — you can’t “treat” them to prolong their life. The weight of a great mass of rose or clematis will cause dead branches to snap and make the whole glorious caboodle far more likely to topple in a high wind. And then there is bound to be some general maintenance involving wobbling around on ladders… Oh, this is just too depressing. Unless they know they have honey fungus, I bet Lee and Tom and Ion all go ahead and do what they want to do anyway. I probably would.
When to prune a climber
I live in mid-Kent and my climbing rose has had buds and tiny leaves since January. The outdoor temperatures have been as low as 35F at night, but have not been below freezing for some weeks now. When do you think that I should start pruning it? Bob Ryder, by email
Prune your rose now. It will just shoot again in a few weeks’ time. Rules about the precise time to prune roses are not easily defined. Some varieties shoot much earlier than others, some gardens are more sheltered and some winters are bleaker. Generally, climbers are traditionally pruned during winter (I aim to do mine by Christmas). Repeat-flowering rose bushes (hybrid teas, floribundas, modern shrubs) are best left a bit longer – until February or even as late as mid-March in the colder north. If you prune them later than this, they flower rather later (and we all seem to want roses to do their big show in June).
Some roses don’t need much winter pruning: ramblers should be thinned out after flowering in the summer and then revisited in winter and new growth tied down. Old shrub roses should also be lightly pruned after flowering and revisited in winter every other year or so and an old shoot sawn out from close to the ground.
A better hedge
John and Jean Sheraton, from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, are replacing their leylandii hedge, which grew too tall and wide. Would Pittosporum ‘Silver Queen’ be a substantial enough replacement, and if not, have I other suggestions? The pittosporum, while very probably hardy enough in the West Country and extremely pretty, is not particularly dense.
A better choice might be Elaeagnus x ebbingei, planted about 3ft apart — dense, evergreen and with bronze new foliage, it is fast-growing but easy to prune (in late spring, and again, lightly, in late summer). It has the bonus of lily-of-the-valley-scented flowers in early winter. There are golden-variegated varieties, but they are slower-growing and flower less.
Look to your laurels
Emailer Ruth Boyd also has a hedge problem: a spindly, threadbare 6ft laurel hedge (so thin it looks deciduous in her picture), some of which is dying.
I suggest that she removes any dead plants and cuts the rest down by about half or even more in a few weeks, when the growing season is really under way. She should also clear out the bottom of the hedge, removing debris and old leaves, and feed it with a general fertiliser (a couple of fistfuls per metre), and give it a manure or compost mulch if she has any energy left.
Finally, Bob Robertson’s three-year-old trachelospermum won’t flower. Any tips, he asks. Two: continued patience and a dose of sulphate of potash.
Buy this tough evergreen hedge or border plant from
Similar Posts:
- Help your roses stay happy in the summer heat
- Use these strategies for planting healthy woody shrubs and trees
- Lovely vitex tree adds a lavendar blush to the landscape
- Deal with problem trees before a storm threatens
- Deal with problem trees before a storm threatens
Place your comment