Hi, Thomas Lowe here, Landscape Designer in Atlanta, Georgia. You can view my other videos and landscape designs at eHow.com/thomaslowe or on Facebook at Thomas Lowe Landscape Designs. Today, I'll be talking about planting techniques to form a hedge. Whenever you're going to form a privacy hedge you can think about maybe a formal or more natural type of hedge and also the different sizes of the plants and trees that you would want to use for your privacy hedge. Now this happens to be a licothawae populifolia. That's the genus species. And this plant will grow quite large up to 10 to 12 feet tall if you didn't prune it quite a bit. One of the first things is to think about the width of the plant that you're choosing for your privacy hedge. If it's going to grow 10 feet in length then you would want to plant those plants 10 foot on center because the center of the plant, the halfway point will grow 5 foot on each side. So that the tips will be touching. That will be the proper way to space. However that does take a lot longer for the plants to grow together so many times clients will insist on planting the shrubs or trees much closer, which is okay, you can do that, you'll just have to prune a little bit more but you will get a quicker hedge. Now this licothawae populifolia plant, it is, can be shaped very easily into a formal or natural hedge. This I would say is more of a formal hedge. It's more squared off. Some of the other plants are the rhododendron and it also, this is more of a natural type of privacy screen. And also if you're going to do a natural screen you may not want to plant all of the trees or shrubs in a straight line. You may want to stagger those a bit to kind of create an irregular approach to create more of a natural type of privacy hedge. If you're going to do more of the formal type of hedges as shown here you may want to plant them in a straight line and therefore they're easier to prune in a straight line also. Now if you're going to, if you have a 3 story or large house beside you that you're wanting to screen out obviously you're going to want to get some taller type of plants. In that case you may want to consider cypress trees, Leeland cypress in the southeast, a lot of Italian cypresses out west. Criptomerias tend to do really well too in the south east, and in most of the United States. Those types of trees are very vertical. So that they're going to create a lot of height screening without encroaching too far on your property because they're more vertical shaped type of trees. And also they're evergreen. Also when you're choosing plants for a privacy hedge, always, always for the privacy hedge, make sure that it is a evergreen plant. That means that the leaves, as this licothawae populifolia, will be green year round. Those shed a few little leaves here and there but it is a true evergreen plant. So evergreen trees, evergreen shrubs for your privacy hedge. My name is Thomas Lowe. I'm a landscape designer in Atlanta, Georgia. I hope these have been some helpful tips. Thank you.
home section
