Everything we know about the hedges in your street.
Six plants make up most of the hedging in the Sutherland Shire. Each one wants to be handled differently, and knowing which is which is most of our job. We’ve written down what we actually tell clients at the gate — how fast it grows, how often it needs cutting, whether it survives a hard reduction, and what it’s telling you when it goes brown.
No sign-ups, no email capture. If it saves you a call-out, good.
Lilly pilly
Syzygium and Acmena speciesBumpy, pimpled new leaves that never grow out flat again.
Read the guideMurraya
Murraya paniculata — orange jessamine, mock orangeYellowing leaves, or a hedge that has stopped flowering entirely.
Read the guideBuxus (box)
Buxus microphylla var. japonica and Buxus sempervirensThat orange-bronze colour it goes over winter, which panics everyone.
Read the guidePhotinia ‘Red Robin’
Photinia × fraseri ‘Red Robin’Losing the red, or covered in purple-red spots that keep spreading.
Read the guideSweet viburnum
Viburnum odoratissimumThe fastest screen you can plant — and the one that hates salt wind.
Read the guideCamellia
Camellia sasanqua and Camellia japonicaNo flowers this year — nearly always a timing mistake, not a sick plant.
Read the guideA hedge should be slightly wider at the base than at the top.
This is the single most common reason a hedge goes bare at the bottom, and it has nothing to do with the species, the soil or the fertiliser. If the sides are cut straight up — or worse, leaning in — the top of the hedge shades its own base. The lower foliage gets no light, gives up, and drops off.
Cut with a slight taper and light reaches the whole face. The hedge stays green right to the ground. It is a small change in how the cut is made and it is the difference between a hedge that lasts and one that slowly hollows out from the bottom up.
A trim and a reduction are two different jobs.
Every guide here distinguishes between the two, because it is the thing that moves the price more than anything else. A trim takes a hedge back to a shape it already has. A reduction resets a hedge that has got away — usually cutting into bare wood, and usually looking confronting for a few weeks before it thickens up.
Whether your plant survives that second job depends entirely on the species. Lilly pilly, murraya and viburnum reshoot from old wood happily. Box does too, but so slowly that a hard cut leaves you bare for a year or more. Each guide says which.
Send us a photo of your plant.
You don’t need to know what it is. Text a picture through and we’ll tell you what you’ve got, what it needs and when it’s due — whether or not you book anything.