Many landscapes are at their thinnest this time of year. Leaves are off the trees and shrubs, and you can see through where you used to see green. This may raise the desire to plant a clipped evergreen hedge or informal screen along your boundary.
This defines your property line in a friendly way. It also adds a ribbon of green that looks good all year, but is most noticeable and cheerful in winter.
Selecting plants for this project starts with an understanding of their requirements for sun, shade or something in between. Plus you must think about how short or tall, how wide or narrow you wish the hedge or screen to grow.
Basically a hedge is kept short and clipped on the sides and top to give a rather stiff, vertical effect. The effect is formal and looks good when done right. It is usually kept short enough for a person to trim it, late each winter, while standing on the ground.
Most often, a single kind of plant, such as Japanese holly, English laurel or Japanese boxwood, is chosen. This may be the best choice when space is limited and you want to avoid any intrusion into sidewalks or driveways.
A screen is a looser, more informal look, with shrubs allowed to reach their normal mature height. It is a bigger look, but one to work on over time and cherish. The effect on the sides is soft, sometimes even feathery. And this type of screen lends itself to a mix of plants that can even include deciduous shrubs such as forsythia, barberry, quince or hydrangea. While a long stretch of deciduous shrubs may look boring in winter, a mix of evergreen and deciduous looks fine, especially if the evergreens present the background.
Try to get this work done by midspring. This will allow roots of the new plants to get growing. Careful attention must be paid to watering in dry weather through the summer the first year and probably the second.
