Gardening: Hedges and edges add structure - and hide weeds - Gareth Carter

Low hedges can be used as accent plants as well as providing structure to the garden, writes Gareth Carter.

Gareth Carter is the general manager of Springvale Garden Centre in Whanganui

OPINION

Take a moment to step back and think about your garden. Is there anything you would like to add – anything you have always wanted to try? Do you just want to find some new ideas? One way to do this is to visit other gardens or look at magazines and books.

Recently I took the opportunity to visit some spectacular gardens featured in the Taranaki Garden Festival and Fringe Festival. One of the features many of the gardens espoused was the use of hedges as landscape features, purely for aesthetic function to draw the eye a certain way, offer a certain look, or give definition to a garden edge that allows the plants behind to take the show. Hedges can be a feature themselves.

Many think of hedges as screen plants for privacy or wind protection and this is a highly recommended practice. But today we are looking at the use of low hedges as accent plants.

A garden comes about in many and varied ways. Usually, there is a house on a section and the garden comes as an afterthought. Plants are placed to fill the gaps in the corners and along the sides of a section. They beautify and soften “hard standing” surface areas such as driveways and patios.

The choice of which plants to fill these spaces comes about in different ways, depending on the inclination of the person in charge. Some will engage a garden designer to make the choices for them. Others with good plant knowledge will make the same considerations themselves, consciously looking at spatial awareness combined with focal points, colour themes, soil conditions, light, etc, to gain the desired outcome.

A quite different, and very frequent, method of gardening is “plonking”. You see a plant you want to have, purchase it and then walk around the yard looking for a spot where it might best grow.

Both these methods result in highly successful and beautiful gardens.

The use of hedges and edges can be a method of connecting different areas in a garden and carrying through a theme.

I have for years been a fan of the use of hedges. For every situation, there is a hedge to fit the spot. There are so many benefits to planting hedges instead of fencing; they can provide wind protection, the changing colours, food and flowers, and of course they are habitat-friendly for birds and insects.

I highly rate the use of small hedges in the garden. Aside from a certain visual appeal, there are a couple of practical bonuses in the use of small hedges (30-50cm high) in the front of a garden. One I have discovered as my kids were growing is that a small hedge acts as a buffer to the onslaught of a stray football. The hedge may take a few hits but it will save the plants and garden behind from much damage. A second, highly practical reason is that hedges hide weeds – a few weeds that one has not quite got around to pulling will sit out of sight when the busyness of life limits gardening time.

Creating a clear definition between garden and lawn adds a sense of formality. This style of garden, where a clear definition is formed, can be done with a hedge creating a height barrier as described above, or with repeated form and colour of a groundcover-type plant, offers high visual appeal and will draw the eye.

The use of small grasses is highly effective to create this style of border edging. Some of the options include:

Liriope comes in a handful of varieties. Mainly with deep green, strap-like leaves, they put on a magnificent display of flowers during the summer months. It handles sun or shade.

Carex Featherfalls has long, thin, variegated leaves. The colour contrast in its leaves makes a striking display year-round. It maintains a small manageable clump and has feathery flower plumes in the summer months.

Mondo grass has long been used as a garden edging. It often looks best if it is up against a hard edge such as a driveway, patio area or garden edging. Available in black and green, the texture offers style.

Heuchera are an excellent option for shady areas. The number of varieties and the diverse foliage colours offer a lot of opportunities for providing contrast. They are neat and contained in their clumping growth habit. Constant foliage colour makes these an excellent choice.

Senecio bella grigio is a more recently available plant in New Zealand. Its name translates to “beautiful grey”. It offers striking silver foliage and is so bold it stops you in your tracks. Unusually for a silver plant, it seems to survive better in a garden where there is some shade offered. It grows about 40cm high by 60cm wide.

For small compact hedging, there are a number of options.

Buxus Koreana we have found to be an excellent small hedge that does not suffer the blight that afflicts the more common box.

Lonicera is a small-leafed, quick-growing hedge. It offers a deep great colour.

Euonymus has a dense compact habit that is ideal for hedging between 30cm and 1m high. It is faster than the traditional buxus sempervivans (English box) with a similar look.

Corokia Frosted Chocolate and Corokia Geentys Green are two native shrubs that make easy, medium-sized hedges. Very hardy and gives a lovely background colour. Strongly upright, they trim well from 50cm up to 2.5m.

Edible hedging is another great option. NZ cranberry (Myrtus Ugni) makes a lovely edible hedge which also produces an amazing fragrance at fruiting time. This can be maintained as a hedge at any height between 30cm to 1.5m.

A larger-growing option as a screen or shelter plant is griselinia, a great favourite that is coastal-hardy, growing 3-5m or so.

There are also some good options for flowering hedges:

English lavender (such as Munstead Dwarf, Dilly Dilly, Hidcote Blue, Grosso, Thumberlina Leigh) put on a good show with flowers flushing intensely in November and carrying on through the summer months.

Escallonia Fields Scarlet and Escallonia Red Knight are both highly attractive flowering hedges with red flowers produced pretty much throughout the year, with stronger flushes during summer. These are excellent for recovering from hard pruning and form a dense hedge.

For more gardening information visit www.springvalegardencentre.co.nz.