Renovating privet hedge with bare root

phill4

Hi hedging experts! I’m looking for advice or any thoughts on my next step with an old hedge that i have hard pruned to renovate/rejuvenate. I don’t know how old it is (est 40/50 years +) and was desperate for hard pruning.

When it was fully grown mid summer the hedge extended well past the lawn edge that you can see in the photo. 

I have purchased 100 small bare root plans to plant at the base to do two things
1- try and straighten it out. 

2- encourage fresh growth at the base and try to grow/cut it into a batten with a wider base. 

My question is how far away / in front of the existing shrubs should I plant the new bare roots? They are small (1 year old). I ran a strong line around 12 inches in front of the hedge and think I might aim for that. 

I hope I’ve explained this is a comprehensive way 🙂

JennyJ

From a hard pruning like that, they should grow back from low down, particularly if you cut some of the branches at the front down low, so I would only try putting new plants in if there's a large gap, such as if some of the originals had died and been removed. You can allow some low shoots to grow long and then pull them into a horizontal position and tie them in to gradually fill gaps. New ones will be tricky to plant and get established in the root zone of the old ones.