Hedge Reduction in Hertfordshire

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Reduction is a different job from trimming. Trimming cuts this year's growth back to last year's line. Reduction cuts into established wood to bring a hedge back to a size somebody can actually live with.

Whether it works depends almost entirely on the species, and that is the first thing worth establishing.

Species That Take It Well

• Yew — excellent. Regenerates from old wood, and hard reduction is how ancient yew hedges are maintained
• Beech and hornbeam — good, cut in late winter
• Hawthorn, blackthorn and native mixed hedging — bred for it. Field hedges are cut to a fraction of their height routinely
• Laurel — regenerates readily, looks rough for a season
• Privet — extremely forgiving, can be taken to almost nothing
• Holly — slower, but it recovers

The Species That Does Not

On a conifer hedge, what can be done is a reduction to the lowest point where there is still green foliage, then a firm annual cut to hold it there. Where that is not close enough to what you want, the real choice is between living with it and replacing it — and replacement is less drastic than it sounds, because a new hedge of an appropriate species reaches useful screening height in a few years and is then maintainable at the size you actually wanted.

Height and Width Are Different Jobs

Height reduction

Usually done in one go, up to about a third of the height on a species that regenerates. The cut face is bare for a season and greens over from the sides.

Width reduction

One side at a time, with a full growing season between them. A hedge cut back hard on both faces in the same year has lost almost all its leaf area at once, and species that would recover comfortably from one side often do not survive both.

Width is the dimension people notice last and it is where the garden goes. Half a metre off each side of a twenty-metre boundary returns twenty square metres of garden.

What Our Hedge Reduction Service Covers

• Height reduction to an agreed line
• Staged width reduction, one side per season
• Renovation of old neglected hedges over two or three years
• Reduction of hedges that have gone bare and leggy at the base
• Removal of trees that have grown up inside a hedge line
• Re-establishing a proper tapered profile so it stays dense
• All material removed — and there is a great deal of it

Timing

Late winter for deciduous hedges, roughly January to early March, while they are dormant. Early spring or autumn for laurel, holly and privet. Early spring for yew, which then has the whole season to respond.

Nesting birds rule out heavy reduction between about March and August, which in practice makes September to February the working window for this kind of job.

What to Expect Afterwards

A reduced hedge looks severe for a season. The cut faces are bare, the shape is blunt, and it does not look like the photographs until a full growing season has been through it. On yew, two or three. That is normal and it is worth knowing before rather than after.

Hedge Maintenance Work Across Hertfordshire

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