Home › Advice Centre › Hedge Maintenance
Height reduction is one of the most common hedge requests, usually because a boundary hedge has quietly become a wall over fifteen or twenty years and is now taking the light out of a garden.
Physically it is almost always possible. The question that actually matters is what the hedge looks like afterwards, and that depends on what it is.
Species That Will Take It
- Beech and hornbeam — reduce hard in late winter and they come back well
- Hawthorn, blackthorn and native mixed hedging — these are bred for it. A field hedge is cut to a fraction of its height routinely
- Laurel — regenerates readily, though it looks rough for a season
- Privet — extremely forgiving. It can be taken to almost nothing and will come back
- Holly — slower, but it recovers
- Yew — the one conifer that regenerates from old wood. A hard reduction takes two or three years to look right, and is usually worth doing rather than losing an old hedge
The Species That Will Not
Leylandii, Lawson cypress, thuja and most other conifers have no dormant buds in old brown wood. Cut below the green and it stays brown permanently. This is the most common disappointment in hedge work and it is entirely predictable, so it is better said before the job than discovered afterwards.
With a leylandii hedge, the reduction that is possible is down to the lowest point where there is still green foliage on the sides. If that is three metres and you wanted two, the options are:
- Reduce to the limit of the green and hold it there with an annual cut
- Accept a brown top that will very slowly be colonised from the sides, which on a wide hedge can partly work and on a narrow one will not
- Remove and replace with something that can be kept at the height you want
Replacement sounds drastic and often is not. A new hedge of an appropriate species reaches a usable screening height in a few years, and it will then be maintainable at the size you actually want rather than the size the previous owner's leylandii chose.
How Much Can Come Off in One Go
On species that regenerate, up to about a third of the height in a single cut is a comfortable amount. More than that is possible on vigorous species but the hedge will look severe for a year or two.
For a hedge that matters, staging the work is better: reduce the height one year, cut the sides back once the top has recovered. It costs more in total and produces a far better hedge.
The Practical Side of a Tall Reduction
- There is a great deal more material than people expect. A metre off the top of a twenty-metre run is a lot of volume
- The top of the hedge is being cut where nobody has been for years, and it is often hollow, uneven or full of ivy underneath
- The cut face will be bare for a season. It greens over from the sides on species that regenerate
- Neighbours should be told. Reducing a boundary hedge changes their garden as well as yours, and it is a conversation that is much easier before than after
If the hedge is not yours, the position is different. You may generally cut back what overhangs on your side, but you cannot reduce the height of a hedge growing on somebody else's land. Where a tall evergreen hedge is blocking light, the council's high hedges procedure exists for exactly that situation.
View our Hertfordshire Hedge Maintenance service →
More Hedge Maintenance Advice
Visit the Tree Masters Hertfordshire Advice Centre →
Ask Us About Your Own Garden
Send a photograph taken from a distance so the whole height is visible, and tell us what species it is if you know. That is enough for us to say what is achievable.
Tell us what needs doing across Hertfordshire and we will quote for the work. Call 07388 094829, message us on WhatsApp or use the form below.