Almost everyone who needs a hedge reaches for cherry laurel first at the garden centre. It stands there in long rows, fast, evergreen and cheap. And that is exactly why it grows behind millions of garden fences as a green wall that hardly an insect or a bird ever looks at. Before you give in to that reflex, take a quiet moment. You plant a hedge for twenty or thirty years. The question is not what fills in fastest, but what you actually want from it.
The good news: the best time to plant is also the cheapest. From early October to mid November, that is CW 40 to 46, you can buy bare-root stock. These are shrubs without a pot, sold in bundles, for a fraction of the container price. The soil is still warm, the plant is dormant, and by spring it has quietly made roots.
Why not just cherry laurel?
Cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) sells because it quickly forms a closed wall. The price for that is high, you just pay it later. Its glossy leaves and black berries contain cyanide compounds; for children and pets they are toxic. Bees find little at the flowers, birds largely avoid the berries, and because no native insect eats the leathery leaves, nothing really lives in such a hedge.
On top of that comes a problem many overlook: birds do carry off the few fruits, and in damp woodlands cherry laurel germinates and crowds out the ground flora. In Switzerland it has been on the list of banned invasive plants since 2024. In Germany it is still allowed, but the direction is clear.
Evergreen is a wish, not a necessity. A hornbeam never fully drops its leaves; it carries them leaf-brown through winter and is just as opaque. And if it really must be lush green, the native yew is the long-lived answer instead of the imported laurel cherry.
Purpose first, then plant
The most common mistake is to buy a hedging plant and only then work out what for. Turn it around. Four purposes cover almost every garden, and each leads to a different choice.
- Privacy from the neighbours
Opaque, even in winter: a slim formal hedge of hornbeam, privet or yew, trimmed to 1.80 to 2 metres high and 40 to 60 centimetres deep.
- Something for birds and insects
A free-growing wild hedge of hawthorn, blackthorn, cornelian cherry and dog rose. It flowers in spring, bears fruit in autumn and is only thinned every few years.
- Wind protection in an open garden
A permeable hedge slows wind better than a solid wall, where it backs up and swirls. Field maple and hornbeam in two staggered rows are ideal here.
- Just a clear boundary
A low, tidy edge: privet or a boxwood alternative like Japanese holly, kept at 60 to 90 centimetres.
Before you buy, note down honestly which of these purposes comes first for you. Usually it is two, and then you decide which one wins. A hedge can be privacy and bird food at once, but it is rarely perfect at both.
The candidates at a glance
These four native species cover the vast majority of gardens. All four are sold bare-root in autumn, all four take pruning well and are undemanding about soil.
Hornbeam is the best all-rounder for a trimmed hedge. It grows dense, takes any cut and holds its dry leaves until it flushes again, so it screens even in January. Do not confuse it with beech, which copes less well on heavy, wet soils.
Privet is the classic, cheap town hedge. It grows fast, tolerates exhaust fumes and pruning, and if you do not shear it back completely every year, it flowers white in June and bears black berries for blackbirds and thrushes. The berries are mildly toxic to people.
Hawthorn is the star of any wild hedge: thorny and therefore a safe nesting site, smothered in white flowers in May, laden with red fruit from September that birds love. It can be trimmed too, but shows its worth growing freely.
Field maple is tough and vigorous, tolerates drought and city climate and turns a warm yellow in October. As a formal hedge or in a loose windbreak hedge, it does equally well.
If you are unsure, privet is almost always a safe bet. It forgives beginner mistakes, grows on nearly any soil and, as bare-root stock in autumn, often costs less than a euro per plant. For a first hedge on which you learn to prune, it is the most patient choice.
Planting bare-root: use the autumn window
Bare-root stock is the big argument for autumn. The shrubs are lifted from the field at the nursery as soon as they have dropped their leaves, and sold without a pot. That makes them light, cheap and surprisingly reliable to establish. The window for it is narrow: from early October to mid November, CW 40 to 46, as long as the soil is open and still warm.
Buy fresh and plant quickly. Bare-root plants must never dry out between lifting and planting. Stand them with their roots in a bucket of water for a few hours after buying. If you cannot plant right away, heel them into a trench with moist soil.
Run a line and dig a trench. A continuous planting trench beats individual holes. Dig it about 40 centimetres wide and deep enough for the roots to fit without kinking. Loosen the base with a digging fork.
Trim the roots lightly and dip them. Cut off damaged root tips cleanly. A quick dip in a slurry of soil and water keeps the fine roots moist while you plant.
Set to the old soil mark. On the little stem you will see a darker line marking how deep the plant stood in the ground. It goes back in exactly that deep, no deeper. Backfill and firm the soil all around.
Water thoroughly, even in autumn. A generous soaking closes the gaps between root and soil. Then form a watering rim and keep watering in dry weeks until the frost.
Cut back right after planting. This is hard but important: shorten the shoots by about a third. It forces the plant to branch densely from below rather than growing long and bare at the top.
Do the spacing and quantity honestly
The second most common mistake after the wrong species is the wrong spacing. Planted too tight, the shrubs compete and go bare at the base; planted too wide, it takes years for the hedge to close.
For a trimmed formal hedge from small bare-root stock (60 to 100 centimetres tall), reckon on 3 to 5 plants per running metre, that is about 20 to 33 centimetres apart in the row. It sounds dense, but it gives a closed wall after just two to three years.
For a free-growing wild hedge you can be more generous: 1 to 2 plants per metre, in two staggered rows 40 to 50 centimetres apart. That way the species interlock into a natural, layered structure.
Measure your hedge length and multiply honestly: 10 metres of formal hedge need 30 to 50 plants. With bare-root stock that often stays under 50 euros for the whole run.
A hedge you cut back boldly on planting day rewards you for ten years with density from the bottom up.
Old gardener's rule
Seeing it through the first two years
A freshly planted hedge is not yet a hedge; it is a row of small shrubs that want to establish. The decisive year is the first. Keep the root zone weed-free and mulch with leaves or grass clippings, which holds moisture and suppresses grass. In the first summer, watering during dry spells matters more than any feeding; water rarely and deeply rather than a little every day.
You give the first real formative cut in the second year. For most hedging plants the main date is not in autumn but around midsummer in late June, plus a light shaping cut in late winter. Important: from 1 March to 30 September, German nature protection law allows only a gentle maintenance trim, not a radical cut back to the base, so that birds can nest undisturbed. More on that in the article When to cut a hedge and how to protect nesting birds.
If you want privacy fast and cannot wait for the hedge, a planted-up trellis is the quicker bridge for the first years. How that works is shown in Greening a screen with climbing plants.
Häufige Fragen
When is the best time to plant a hedge?
The best time is autumn, from early October to mid November, that is CW 40 to 46. That is when bare-root stock is available, the soil is still warm and the plants are dormant, so they root in quietly by spring. As long as the soil is not frozen, you can often plant into December. Container plants can theoretically go in year-round, but they cost more and need regular watering in summer.
Why is cherry laurel a problem as a hedge?
Cherry laurel is toxic in all parts, especially for children and pets. Ecologically it is almost worthless: bees find little nectar, birds avoid the berries, and native insects do not eat the leathery leaves, so practically nothing lives in the hedge. It also spreads via bird droppings into woodlands and displaces the ground flora there; in Switzerland it has been banned since 2024. Native alternatives like hornbeam, privet or yew do the same job without these drawbacks.
How many plants do I need per metre of hedge?
For a trimmed formal hedge from small bare-root stock, reckon on 3 to 5 plants per metre, that is about 20 to 33 centimetres apart in the row. For a free-growing wild hedge, 1 to 2 plants per metre is enough, ideally in two staggered rows. Measure your hedge length and multiply: 10 metres of formal hedge need 30 to 50 plants. With bare-root autumn stock that usually stays under 50 euros.
What is the difference between bare-root and container stock?
Bare-root plants are sold in autumn and winter without a pot and without a soil ball, straight from the nursery field. They are much cheaper, easier to transport and often establish better because the root is not coiled inside a pot. The downside: they must never dry out and can only be planted in autumn and winter. Container stock in a pot is more expensive but available all year. For a long hedge, the bare-root option almost always pays off.
Which hedge is best for birds and insects?
A free-growing, mixed wild hedge of native flowering and fruiting shrubs. Hawthorn provides thorny nesting cover, flowers in May and red fruit in autumn; blackthorn, cornelian cherry, dog rose, elder and hazel fit alongside it. The key is a mix of several species and a loose, broad habit rather than sharp shearing. That way you offer food and shelter for insects and birds across the whole year, which a cherry laurel or pure privet wall never does.
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