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Bare-root plants (November to March) cost a fraction of potted ones and establish just as well for most hedging species. Double staggered rows use two lines about 30-40cm apart with plants offset, giving a thicker hedge faster.
What The Hedge Plants Calculator Works Out
- Plants needed: the hedge length divided by the planting spacing, rounded up. Spacing is a species decision: small-leaved formal hedgers like privet and box go in at 30 cm (3 to 4 per metre), beech and hornbeam at 30 to 45 cm, vigorous laurel at 60 cm and yew, the long game, at up to 90 cm. A 10 m privet hedge takes about 34 plants in a single row.
- Double staggered row: two lines 30 to 40 cm apart with plants offset adds roughly 80% more plants and repays it with a hedge that is dense at the base from the start, the feature single rows take years to grow into.
- Planting materials: about 0.04 m3 of compost or well-rotted manure per metre of trench, a mycorrhizal dip for bare roots, and mulch 75mm deep over a metre-wide strip. Formative pruning, cutting deciduous whips back by a third, feels brutal and builds the base.
- Spacing override (advanced): use the spacing your supplier recommends for the plant size bought. Larger 90 to 120 cm whips can go further apart; tiny 40 to 60 cm transplants are often planted closer to fill in sooner.
- Double row extra and spares (advanced): edit the 80% double-row uplift, and add a percentage of spares. Bare-root hedging typically loses 5% to 10% in the first summer, so a few spares heeled in elsewhere let you fill gaps with matching plants.
- Bare-root versus pot-grown cost (advanced): the plant count at each price. Bare-root natives and beech cost around GBP 1 to GBP 2.50 each in bundles of 25 to 50 and are sold dormant from November to March; pot-grown or root-balled plants, the norm for laurel and yew, run from GBP 5 to GBP 15 and can go in all year with watering.
- Guards and canes (advanced): spiral rabbit guards with a bamboo cane cost about GBP 0.45 a set and are essential in rural gardens or where deer and rabbits graze; count one per plant.
- Species table (advanced): plant counts for every listed species at your length, so you can weigh a cheap fast hedge (hawthorn, privet) against one that outlives its planters (yew) before ordering. Keep trimming outside the March to August nesting season, and remember leylandii demands two or three cuts a year forever.
Further reading: RHS: planting hedges.