When Should You Cut Your Hedges? A Nottingham Guide to Timing and the Law

The most common question we get about hedges is not how, it is when. Someone has a beech that has gone shaggy, a leylandii that has crept up another foot, or a laurel eating the path, and they want to know whether they are allowed to touch it yet and whether this is the right month to do it.

The short version: for most garden hedges, late August into September is the best time for the main annual trim. Beyond that it depends on what the hedge is, whether it needs a trim or a proper reduction, whether it flowers, whether anything is nesting in it, and what the weather is doing. The rest of this guide takes those one at a time.

Nesting birds come first

This is the part people are least sure about, so it is worth being precise.

No law says you cannot cut a garden hedge in a particular month. The fixed dates you may have heard of apply to farmland hedgerows, not gardens. What does apply to every hedge in the country is the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which makes it an offence to intentionally take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while it is in use or being built. Running a hedge trimmer through a hedge with a blackbird sitting on eggs in it does exactly that.

The main nesting season runs from March to the end of August. Natural England's guidance lists trimming hedges among the jobs that can harm birds in the breeding season and advises timing work to avoid it, and the RSPB asks people not to cut hedges between March and August. Some birds start in February in a mild year and some are still feeding young in September, so treat the dates as a guide rather than a hard edge.

In practice that means walking the hedge slowly before any cut and looking into it properly from both sides, because a nest is easy to miss from the outside. Birds going in and out of the same spot are the giveaway. If there is an active nest, that section waits until the young have flown. There is no workaround. A light trim after a proper check is lawful in summer. A hard cut back that opens the whole hedge up is not something to do in nesting season even if you found nothing, because it strips out the cover every bird in the garden relies on.

We check every hedge before we start and we will tell you if something is in there. A fortnight's delay is a lot cheaper than a fine.

Which hedge have you got?

Half the timing questions we get start with not knowing what the hedge is. These are the ones we see most around Nottingham, and the quickest way to tell them apart.

• Beech: oval leaves with a gently wavy edge, bright green in spring, and the giveaway is that a clipped beech hedge holds its dead brown leaves all winter instead of dropping them
• Hornbeam: looks like beech at a glance, but the leaf is pleated with ribs and has a toothed edge. It hangs on to some brown leaves in winter, but less reliably than beech
• Hawthorn: small lobed leaves, proper thorns along the stems, white blossom in May and red berries in autumn. Common in older boundary hedges and anything that started life as a field hedge
• Privet: small, smooth oval leaves in pairs along the stem, kept through most winters, and sprays of heavily scented white flowers in July if it is left uncut. The standard front garden hedge across most of the city's suburbs
• Laurel: big glossy leaves the size of your hand on a thick stemmed shrub. Grows fast and dense
• Holly: smaller glossy leaves with spines, and red berries on the female plants in winter
• Yew: dark green, flat, soft needles in two rows along the shoot, with red berries in autumn. Worth getting right, because it is the one common conifer that takes a hard cut
• Leylandii, thuja and Lawson cypress: flat, feathery sprays of scale like foliage rather than leaves or needles. Crush a bit: thuja smells of pineapple, Lawson cypress of parsley, leylandii just resinous. The difference matters, because thuja will sometimes regrow from old wood and the other two will not
• Box: tiny rounded leaves on a slow, dense shrub, usually in low formal hedges and edging

If it is none of those, send us a photo. We can normally name it from a picture of a leaf and a stem.

The calendar, hedge by hedge

Different hedges want different months, and getting this wrong is what leaves a hedge brown, bare or twice the size it should be. Broadly, the hedges around here fall into four groups.

Main nesting season, March to August. Check every hedge before any cut, and no hard cutting back.

JJan

FFeb

MMar

AApr

MMay

JJun

JJul

AAug

SSep

OOct

NNov

DDec

Beech, hornbeam and hawthorn

Deciduous. One main cut a year

Laurel and holly

Evergreen. One main cut a year

Yew

One cut. Regrows from old wood

Box

Twice a year, on a dull day

Privet and Lonicera

Fast. Two or three cuts

Leylandii, thuja and cypress

Fast. Last cut by end of August

Flowering hedges

Forsythia, escallonia, lavender

Main trimRegular trims for fast growersHard cut backStraight after floweringCheck for nests first

Beech, hornbeam and hawthorn

The classic deciduous hedges, and the most forgiving. Beech and hornbeam hold their dead leaves through winter, which is why a beech hedge still gives you privacy in January.

• Main trim: late summer, August into September, once the year's growth has slowed. That cut holds through winter
• Light tidy: early summer if it is looking ragged, after checking for nests
• Hard reduction: winter, between leaf fall and the end of February, while the hedge is dormant. All three recover well from being cut back hard
• Hawthorn is tougher still and copes with almost anything. It flowers on the previous year's growth, so a hedge trimmed hard in late winter will not blossom much that spring. On a boundary hedge most people do not mind. On one you keep for the flowers and berries, cut it straight after flowering instead

Laurel, holly, yew and box

The evergreens that give you a solid screen all year.

• Laurel wants one main cut in late summer, with a second in early summer if it is racing away. The leaves are big, so a hedge trimmer slices through them and leaves torn edges that go brown. On a hedge you look at every day, secateurs or loppers give a cleaner finish, if you have the time. Laurel takes a hard cut well, done in mid-spring as growth starts
• Holly is slow, so once a year in late summer is plenty. It also tolerates a hard cut, again in spring
• Yew is the easiest hedge in the country to look after. One cut in late summer, or two if you like it sharp, and yew can safely be trimmed into early autumn where other conifers cannot. It is also the common conifer that regrows from old wood, so an overgrown yew can be brought right back
• Box is usually cut twice, once in early summer and again in late summer. Trim it on a dull, dry day: hot sun scorches the fresh cut leaves, and wet foliage spreads box blight, which is the bigger worry on box hedges now

Leylandii, thuja and Lawson cypress

The fast conifers, and the ones that cause the most grief.

Two different jobs get called "cutting the leylandii", and they need separating. A trim takes off the recent green growth and keeps the hedge at a size it already is. A reduction changes the size of the hedge, and on a conifer that is a much more limited operation than people expect.

• Trimming: two or three times a year between April and the end of August, checking for nests before each cut. Leylandii can put on a metre in a year, and a hedge left alone for two or three summers becomes a very different job
• The August cut off: we stop trimming conifers at the end of August. The RHS advises the same, because late cut growth does not harden before the cold and you get browning along the top and sides. It is a strong rule of thumb rather than a law of nature, but we have seen enough brown tops in spring not to test it
• The rule that matters most: on leylandii and Lawson cypress, the important line is where the live green growth stops. Inside it you can cut as often as you like. Cut past it into the brown and that patch stays bare, because these conifers do not shoot from old wood. Thuja (western red cedar) sometimes will, but not reliably enough to count on

That is why height and width are two different questions on an overgrown leylandii. The top can come down, because the hedge grows a new green top over the cut. The sides can only come in as far as there is still green, and on a hedge that has been let go that is often only the outer few inches over a deep brown interior. Take more than that off and you get the bare, brown sided hedges you see on every other street.

Flowering hedges

Forsythia, escallonia, lavender, the informal hedges people plant for colour.

The rule is simple: cut straight after flowering, whenever that is. Forsythia in late spring, escallonia in late summer or autumn once the flowers are done, lavender as soon as the flowers fade. Trim them in late summer like everything else and you cut off next year's flowers. Lavender has one extra rule: shape it every year and never cut into the old woody stems, because like most conifers it will not regrow from them.

How often is often enough

It depends on how fast the thing grows, and the fast growers cost more to neglect than to keep up with.

• Two or three cuts a year: privet, leylandii, thuja, Lonicera nitida. Late spring, midsummer, late summer
• Twice a year: box, and any formal hedge you want kept razor sharp
• Once a year: beech, hornbeam, hawthorn, laurel, holly, yew. Late summer
• After flowering: anything grown for its flowers

A hedge that only needs this year's growth removing is a very different job from one that has been left for three years. On a fast grower you cannot get back to the old line with one trim, because you are into old wood before you reach it. That is when a trim turns into a reduction.

What goes wrong at the wrong time

Most of the hedge damage we get asked to sort out comes from a cut made in the wrong month, not a bad cut.

• Conifers trimmed in autumn: browning along the top and sides where soft new growth was caught by the cold. It looks like disease. It is timing
• Conifers cut past the green: permanent bare patches on the sides. There is no fix short of replacing the hedge or screening it
• Hard cuts in nesting season: destroyed nests and, at worst, a criminal offence. Even without birds, a hedge stripped in June is under stress in the driest part of the year
• Trimming in a heatwave or drought: fresh cut leaves scorch, and a hedge that is already short of water is being asked to push new growth it cannot support. Wait for a dull spell
• Trimming in a hard frost: the cut ends get frost damaged. Pick a mild, dry day in winter for any reduction work
• Flowering hedges cut at the standard time: a year with no flowers

None of that is fatal except cutting a conifer into old wood, but all of it costs a season or more to grow out.

Bringing an overgrown hedge back

If a hedge has got away, the temptation is to hack it down to size in one go. Whether that works depends entirely on what it is.

Deciduous hedges (beech, hornbeam, hawthorn, privet) can be renovated hard. The RHS puts beech, box, hawthorn, holly, hornbeam, Lonicera nitida and yew among the hedges that can be reduced by up to half in height and width in a single cut, with anything more drastic staged over two or three years. The way we do a badly overgrown one is over two winters: cut one side back hard to within a few inches of the main stems in the first winter and leave the other side alone, then do the second side the following winter once the first has regrown. The top can come down in either year. Done in the dormant season and finished before March, the hedge is back in shape within two or three growing seasons, and the staging means you never lose all your screening at once.

Laurel and holly also take a hard cut, and mid-spring is the time for it, once the frosts have passed and the hedge has the whole growing season to leaf up again.

Yew can be cut back to bare wood and will come again, though it takes a couple of years to look right.

Leylandii, Lawson cypress and most other conifers cannot be renovated in width, for the reason above. The height can be taken down, and often that is the fix people actually need. If the hedge is too wide and the green is only on the outer few inches, the realistic options are to live with the width, take the top down and accept the rest, or take it out and replace it with a fence or a better hedge. We will tell you that on the first visit rather than cutting it and hoping.

Any big reduction also produces far more waste than people expect. A hedge can look small from the garden and still fill a trailer once both sides and the top come off. Green waste is the householder's responsibility, so if someone is taking it away for you, they should be registered as a waste carrier. When we do a reduction it all goes with us.

Height, neighbours and the pavement

Four things worth knowing before a dispute, not after. This is not legal advice and the detail depends on the circumstances, but these are the rules that come up.

Overhanging the footpath. A hedge on your boundary that grows out over the pavement or road is yours to deal with. Under section 154 of the Highways Act 1980, the highway authority can serve a notice requiring you to cut back anything that obstructs or endangers people using the highway, and if you do not, it can do the work and recover the cost. Keeping the hedge trimmed to the boundary line and clear of the footway avoids the letter.

A neighbour's hedge on your side. You can cut back branches that cross into your property, up to the boundary and no further. Going past it, or reducing the height, is damaging their property. The cuttings are still theirs, so offer them back rather than throwing them over the fence. And if the trees in that hedge are protected, or you are in a conservation area, even trimming the overhang can need the council's say so first.

Hedges over two metres. The high hedges rules in the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 let a council act on a complaint about a line of two or more mostly evergreen or semi-evergreen trees or shrubs that is over two metres tall and is affecting a neighbour's reasonable enjoyment of their home or garden. The neighbour has to try to settle it informally first, usually pays the council a fee, and the council decides what height is reasonable and can order a reduction. Deciduous hedges are outside those rules. Nearly every height problem we see is fixed by a conversation and a reduction long before it gets there.

Protected trees. You do not need planning permission to trim or reduce a garden hedge. The two things that can apply are a Tree Preservation Order, which can cover individual trees within a hedge, and conservation areas, where work on trees above a certain size needs six weeks' notice to the council. Neither covers a clipped shrub hedge, but an old hedge that has grown into a line of trees is a different matter. If protected trees form part of the hedge, or you are in a conservation area and the "hedge" is really a row of trees, check with the council before starting. We check for protection orders before any tree work as a matter of course.

Doing it yourself or getting someone in

A short hedge you can reach from the ground with a decent trimmer is a Saturday job, and there is no reason to pay anyone to do it.

It becomes worth calling someone when:

• The hedge is above head height and you would be trimming off a ladder. A hedge trimmer at full stretch on a ladder is how a lot of A&E visits start
• It is a reduction rather than a trim, particularly on a conifer, where the green line decides whether the hedge survives it looking decent
• The hedge is long, or deep, and the waste is more than the brown bin takes in a month
• It is a roadside hedge where you would be working in the road
• You are not sure what species it is, whether anything is nesting in it, or whether any of the trees in it are protected
• The access is awkward: a hedge behind a garage, along a bank, or with only a narrow path to get the waste out

What you should get from anyone doing it properly: a look through the hedge for nests before the first cut, clean level sides and top rather than a scalloped finish, the cut kept within the green on conifers, and every bit of the waste taken away by someone registered to carry it. If a quote does not include the clear up, ask.

What moves the price

We do not publish a rate per hedge, because two hedges the same length can be very different jobs. What decides it:

• Height and access. Anything above head height needs a platform or ladder work, which is slower and needs two people
• Length and depth. A thin beech hedge trims quickly. A leylandii two metres deep does not
• Trim or reduction. A trim removes the season's growth. A reduction removes years of it, and the waste can be ten times the volume
• Waste. All of it goes with us. The more that comes off, the more there is to load and dispose of
• Frequency. A hedge on a regular cycle is quicker each visit than one caught up once every few years, so a standing arrangement usually works out cheaper per year

We can usually tell you what a hedge needs, and roughly what is involved, from a couple of photos. The useful ones are the whole hedge from a few steps back, one showing how you get to it, and something in shot for scale, such as a person, a wheelie bin or a fence panel. Say roughly how long it is and when it was last cut, and we can normally give you an idea before anyone comes out.

Late summer into early autumn is the main trimming window for most hedges, and the conifers are closed for the year once August is out. When the deciduous hedges drop their leaves, the winter reduction season begins. Get the timing right and a hedge is one of the lowest effort things in the garden. Get it wrong and you spend two years looking at the evidence.

We do hedge trimming, reductions and tree work across Nottingham, and if the hedge is part of a bigger tidy up, our guide to low maintenance garden design covers what to put in its place.