Hedging Plants – Yew

Botanically called Taxus baccata.

Description and uses – this dense dark native evergreen bears bright red fruits that look like beads and are highly attractive to birds in winter. It is shade tolerant, copes with any soil and will thrive on chalk. It is highly hardy. Often seen in graveyards and cemeteries. Nothing will grow under a yew tree! Before palm leaves were imported to England, Yew branches were carried on Palm Sunday and at funerals; the tree symbolizes immortality.

Maintenance and problems – To make a yew hedge thicken from the start, tie in the side and forward growth sideways, using the plants' stronger wood as the support. Yew hedges benefit from occasional doses of fertiliser, especially in their early years. Pour liquid feed over the rooting area of a young hedge once a month to encourage growth. If necessary trim in autumn to maintain hedges from a foot upwards to twenty feet. No regular pruning is necessary, but can be trimmed and shaped when required To prevent a yew hedge becoming thin at the bottom, cut it ‘to a batter’ - tapering the sides from bottom to top giving the shape of a flat topped letter A, allowing more light will reach the lowest parts and encourage stronger growth.. Yew has the rare capacity of re-growing from mature wood which means an elderly hedge that has got too wide can be slimmed down by hard pruning in early spring. Treat one to hard pruning, but wait a year before pruning the other side. Those lovely looking berries are poisonous to children and wildlife, so do not allow goats, horses or your kiddie-winkies to pick them!

Hedging yew photograph by wordridden, used under a creative commons attribution licence

hedging yew, hedging berberis, hedging box, hedging cotoneaster, hedging currant, hedging dogwood, hedging edible, hedging euonymus, hedging gorse, hedging guelder rose, hedging hawthorn, hedging hazel, hedging holly, hedging hornbeam, hedging juniper, hedging laurel, hedging Lavender, hedging leyland cypress, hedging photinia, hedging potentilla, hedging privet, hedging pyracantha, hedging rose, hedging sloe, hedging thuja