All About Instant Hedging

Instant hedging is the ultimate way to achieve show garden standards without the wait. If you’re planning to make the most of the warm weather with garden parties and days spent lounging on the lawn, instant hedging can create an established hedge quickly, offering privacy, colour and texture.

Instant hedging is grown in a metre long trough and is regularly pruned to give you a solid hedging unit that has already knitted together, both foliage and roots, providing a healthy hedge with a high success rate. Instant hedging can be purchased year-round and comes delivered in either a trough or bag for easy planting. Available in a range of hedging species, including our most popular species, our instant troughs will look great in any garden.

This instant hedge effect requires the skilled work of experienced nursery staff and to achieve this look in your own garden, with individual hedge plants, could take between 2-5 years. The time, skill and resources that go into growing these pre-clipped hedging troughs are reflected in their price. However, the immediate effect of planting any of our instant hedging troughs is completely worthwhile and will provide you with a show-garden quality hedge, instantly.

When entertaining guests in the garden, the last thing you want is an unsightly view. Instant hedging can be planted straight away to ensure something out of your control doesn’t overshadow the hard work you’ve spent on your garden. You can impress your guests with your flowerbeds and garden features without the worry of a tired brick wall or alleyway dampening the view. Taller hedges such as our Western Red Cedar Hedge Plants and Yew Hedge Plants are both great choices.

You can also tuck away garden areas such as your compost bin, water barrel and shed. Whilst practical, these are not the prettiest of things to look at. A small amount of instant hedging, such as our Lonicera Nitida Hedge Plants can act as a divider, closing off these spaces of your garden. It can also prevent any unpleasant smells wafting over too.

When you’re entertaining guests you don’t want to be overlooked by your next-door neighbours or people walking past on an adjoining street. By planting instant hedging, like our Privet Hedge Plants, you are guaranteed some privacy so that you can enjoy your party in peace. The hedging can be used to create a barrier to any adjoining properties, lining the perimeters of your garden and acting as an all-natural fence.

Instant hedging doesn’t have to be all about providing privacy or security; it can also be used to separate off different parts of your garden. If you have a bigger garden and more space to play with, there are creative ways to separate a patio area or decking with hedging. Shape a special place for entertaining guests or hosting garden events by lining a perimeter around your seating area with our Hawthorn Hedge Plants or Phontinia Red Robin Hedge Plants. These offer a nice distinction between lawn, flowerbeds and patio. 

You could also create a lounge area lined by a wall of hedging, and mimic your living room by bringing out a picnic blanket as a rug, and a table and some chairs. If you want to make it even cosier, move out one of your sofas or armchairs and place some pillows and blankets around. Why not use our Box Instant hedging to complete the look.

All of our instant hedging is delivered, on pallets, in the troughs or bags they were grown in. The troughs are made from either firm plastic or heavy-duty hessian, both of which have handles at either end for easy maneuvering. We use these materials to ensure your instant hedging units are as light as possible. All of our instant hedge units can be handled by two fit people.

Planting instant hedging couldn’t be easier. There’s no need to worry about calculating how many plants you need per metre as they have already been spaced out for you. Simply buy one 1m unit for every metre of hedge you require. Instant hedges will require two people to lift. Follow our planting instructions below, using one trough for every one metre of planting site:

• Start by digging a trench roughly as deep as the instant hedging trough or bag, leaving enough additional space to dig in some well-rotted organic matter.
• Next, sprinkle Rootgrow in the bottom of the trench, following the recommended quantities found on the packet.
• Remove the hedging unit (you’ll need two people for this), and place it in the trench.
• Backfill and firm the hedging unit down into the trench.
• Water your new hedge well and then sit back and enjoy the instant impact it adds to your garden.

To achieve the same effect using hedging plants with a different root type, such as bare roots or pot grown plants, would take between 2-5 years of growth and maintenance. This means that although instant hedging has a slightly higher cost, it’s relative to the time, skill and resources that have been put into creating a ready-made, finished hedging unit that provides instant results in your garden.

Take a look at our full range of instant hedging for more information or tweet me @best4hedging with any planting queries and I’ll be happy to help.