Plant hedging

Wildlife will love my blackthorns – and I’ll like the berries!

My newly designed garden has a gap where the driveway used to be, so I’m filling it in with some hedging. Either side of the gap are some well-established hawthorn hedges, so I’ve decided to plant something similar in between – blackthorn. Both these native, deciduous plants make a robust boundary, are quick-growing and beneficial to wildlife for shelter. If left to grow a li le, the flowers and berries are loved by bees and birds, too. And in the case of blackthorn, its sloe berries can, of course, be made into tasty gin!

You should delay planting if your garden is waterlogged or frozen, but otherwise this is the perfect time to plant deciduous hedging. If you have to wait, simply cluster the bare-roots together, planted temporarily in 20cm (8in) of soil in your border. This is called ‘heeling in’. Bare-root whips of around 30-60cm (1-2ft) in size are cheap and easy to plant now, whereas larger plants are more expensive and need more care to get established.

For extra thickness and sturdiness to match its neighbours either side I’m planting my blackthorn in a double row – incidentally, country hedging is often planted this way so it’s robust and ‘stock-proof’. All I need to do is prepare the soil by removing all weeds and then I can get planting!