Hedge Trimming in Axedale, From Cottage Rows to Shelterbelts

Signs an Axedale hedge or windbreak is overdue

• The top is wider than the bottom. Once a hedge shades its own base the lower growth dies off and you end up with bare legs and a lid. Photinia and pittosporum do this quickly if the sides are not kept tapered.
• Brown on the inside of a cypress row. Old leyland and cupressus windbreaks along the McIvor Highway blocks go hollow in the middle as the outer growth thickens. Once the green is only a thin skin, there is very little room left to cut.
• You cannot see the highway from your driveway. A hedge on the road boundary that has crept out over the years hides oncoming traffic on a road where most of it is doing a hundred.
• Lilly pilly leaves are pimpled and curled. That is psyllid damage, and it gets worse on a hedge that is trimmed hard in spring when the new flush is at its softest.
• The hedge along the rail trail is over the fence. The O'Keefe Rail Trail runs through the township, and a boundary hedge that has grown across it is a problem for the people walking and riding past as well as for you.

What a typical hedge trimming job in Axedale involves

Two jobs come up more than any other. The first is a township house on one of the crescent streets with a photinia or viburnum hedge along the front and a run of pittosporum down the side that has not been touched for two seasons. That is a morning's work with hedge trimmers and a platform ladder: sides brought back to a slight taper, top levelled off a string line, and the clippings chipped on the trailer rather than left in a pile on the nature strip.

The second is a lifestyle block on the edge of town with a long cypress or pine shelterbelt that was planted for wind and has become a wall. That is tree work rather than garden work. Anything above head height and more than a few metres long is done from the elevated platform, and a shelterbelt is not clipped like a formal hedge. We take the sides back to the last green growth, leave the top alone unless the height is genuinely a problem, and warn people up front that conifers will not reshoot from bare brown wood. Cut into that and the gap stays a gap. Where a shelterbelt is too far gone we suggest replacing sections at a time so the paddock is never fully exposed, and the stump grinding in Axedale for the old row is part of the same plan.

Timing is a bigger deal here than in town. Photinia is trimmed after its red spring flush has hardened off, lilly pilly in late spring or early summer once the psyllid risk has eased, and cypress in late spring before the heat. Frost lies on the river flats well into September, and trimming a soft hedge just before a hard frost burns the new cuts, so we hold off on the low parts of the township until the mornings warm up. Nothing formal is trimmed on the run of forty-degree days in January.

Boundaries, roadsides and the bushfire overlay

Shared boundaries. You are entitled to trim a neighbour's hedge back to the fence line on your side, but you cannot go over it, and the clippings technically belong to them. Out here neighbours generally sort it out with a chat, and we are happy to do both sides in the one visit if they agree.

Road boundaries. Hedges on the McIvor Highway frontage and the side roads need to keep sight lines clear at the driveway and stay off the road reserve. A hedge that has grown out over the shoulder is the owner's to cut back. Work on the highway edge needs traffic control, which we arrange.

The rail trail. The trail reserve is council land and the hedge on your side of the fence is yours to keep off it. We plan trail-side trimming for a weekday morning and keep the path open while we work.

Bushfire. Much of Axedale sits under a Bushfire Management Overlay, and a dense cypress hedge against the house is about the worst thing you can have in that setting because it burns hot and fast. We will trim it if that is what you want, but we will also suggest a gap between the hedge and the wall, or a swap to a less flammable species over time. Trimming an existing hedge does not need a permit; removing native vegetation on an overlay block might, and we check with the City of Greater Bendigo before anything comes out.

If the hedge has grown into a row of trees and needs height taken off it, that becomes a reduction job, described on our tree lopping page for Axedale. We trim hedges the same way for hedge trimming in Junortoun, hedge trimming in Strathfieldsaye and hedge trimming in Heathcote. Everything else we do around the township is on the Axedale suburb page, and the main hedge trimming service page for Bendigo covers species and shapes in more detail.

Hedge questions we hear around Axedale