leyland cypress? you have got to be kidding!
Around here, they seem to be taking up where Arborvitae left off. I managed to talk Richard out of those, but once the man makes up his mind, he is not to be deterred. Our landscape designing friend, Amy did her best to talk him out of it. After all, the very thing that recommends it as the perfect choice for monoculture hedges (perish the thought), its lightning speed growth rate, makes it a poor candidate for most landscaping situations.
Here’s another one of those hedges-in-the-making, and the component trees were half that size just a year ago. That’s what R wanted…instant gratification.
So here’s his tree, at the corner of his studio. It requires regular haircuts, but then, as I may have mentioned a time or two, R is a bit lopper-happy. He can hack away at his tree and it is pretty magnificent as a specimen…who’da thunk?
May 29th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Oh no, I think I might have accidentally planted one of these. It was identified as a dwarf variety I wasn’t familiar with, but I’m suspicious it was mis-tagged. Mine certainly has displayed the lightening growth and the instant gratification, but I didn’t mean to get some biggo tree that needs regular haircuts. No hedge for me, just a single specimen, but still I’ve been eying it with a bit of worry, and you’ve got me thinking I’m right to worry.
May 29th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
If he has chopped that lot down, there are another seventeen five times that size waiting for him around our garden.
I despair of them and wish we knew what we were doing all those years ago.
And the pigeons that make their home in them…
And the pigeon droppings that we have to cleanup every day…
And the cost of even getting one lopped down….
Nightmarish.
May 31st, 2010 at 3:36 am
Okay, I’ll be the rogue and go out on a limb. I kind of like these trees. When you’ve got neighbors that are too close and no privacy, instant gratification is how you keep your sanity.
Is there a perfect plant? ….. Just saying…
May 31st, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Megan~I find myself looking at ours and wondering “where will it end?”, but R is happy, I like it at present, and he is the one who will have to do the digging if it comes to that. Don’t know what to say about yours.
Joco~Starlings are the ones that hold their nightly cocktail parties in the hedges, complete with unruly shrieking. Our stand-alone tree doesn’t seem to appeal, thank goodness.
Grace~The perfect plant…hmmm…something to ponder.
June 1st, 2010 at 1:56 am
looks pretty stately and happy in it’s home! Funny that R is lopper-happy. Glad this tree will keep him occupied.
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Wendy~I think it’s a man-thing.
June 3rd, 2010 at 8:55 pm
We planted two in front of our rental house 4 years ago. Big mistake, to say the least. Now we have to have them removed. The lure, of course, was rapid growth.
You’d think we’d learn…
December 29th, 2010 at 2:55 am
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