Should I Cut Back a Hedge Before Landscaping?

Yes, and for a specific reason beyond the obvious mess: it is the only chance you get to set where the hedge will sit for the next twenty years. Once the landscaping is in around it, that decision is made permanently and usually by accident.

The working gap is the thing to get right

So when a hedge is cut back before landscaping, take it further than feels necessary. The extra few inches now is what keeps the hedge maintainable for as long as you own the garden.

What goes wrong in the other order

• Nowhere for the cuttings to fall. A new fence panel or fresh turf is a poor landing site for hedge arisings.
• No room to work. Cutting a hedge with a fence eighteen inches behind it is slow, awkward and risks the fence.
• Stumps and roots found too late. Fence posts want to go exactly where old hedge stumps and root plates already are.
• Access gone. Machinery reaches a boundary far more easily before there is a fence along it.
• The line is invisible. Until the hedge is cut back you often cannot see where the actual boundary runs.

Decide whether the hedge is staying first

Worth settling properly, because the answer changes the whole sequence.

Keeping it: cut it back hard on the side the work is happening, establish the line, and leave the working gap. That is the moment to also put a batter on it — slightly wider at the base — so light reaches the bottom and the base stays green.

Replacing it: hedge and any stumps out first, then the fencing. And check the height question before committing, because a boundary fence is generally limited to two metres under permitted development, so it will not replace the screening a taller hedge was providing.

The order for the whole job

Clear the hedge base while you can

A stage that gets skipped and is worth including. The bottom of a neglected hedge usually carries brambles, ivy, self-sown seedlings and years of leaf litter — and it is far easier to deal with while the garden is open than once borders are planted and a fence is up.

It also matters for the hedge itself. Ivy and weed growth at the base compete with it and keep the bottom damp and dark, which contributes to the base going bare.

The self-sown trees in the line

This is the check worth doing before anything is committed. Ash, sycamore, elder and holly seed readily into hedges, and after twenty or thirty years what began as a hedge plant is a tree.

A hedge cannot carry a Tree Preservation Order, but a tree grown up within one can — and an old hedge that has become a line of trees can be covered too. Stourport's conservation area covers the canal basin and the streets around it, so a tree in a hedge there needs six weeks' written notice to Wyre Forest District Council above 75mm stem diameter, measured 1.5m up. A TPO tree needs written consent at any size.

Discovering that after the fencing is booked is the expensive version. It is one free phone call at planning stage.

Protecting a hedge you are keeping

Worth a note, because hedges get damaged by landscaping in the same way trees do and it is less obvious.

• Do not raise the soil level against the base of a hedge — it suffocates the roots and rots the stems.
• Do not stack materials or spoil along a hedge line for weeks.
• Do not trench for services tight along the base if it can be routed around.
• Do not let a new patio or path finish hard against the stems; leave a soil gap.

More Stourport-on-Severn Hedge Maintenance Guides

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