Hedge Trimming in Bendigo, Cut to the Local Calendar

Hedges in the old streets and on the new estates

Bendigo's inner heritage streets were planted for privacy long before Colorbond fences. The Victorian villas of Quarry Hill and the interwar homes of Kennington and Flora Hill still carry the hedges that came with them: clipped English box edging the paths, privet and viburnum along the side boundaries, and in a few cases a cypress hedge that was meant to be kept at two metres and now stands at six. Photinia arrived later and is now the default red-tipped boundary screen in almost every 1970s and 1980s garden in Strathdale and East Bendigo. The newer estates on the fringe run to lilly pilly and pittosporum, chosen for fast growth on small lots where a two-storey neighbour is a few metres away.

The climate is what makes hedge work here different from the coast. Bendigo averages only about 510 mm of rain a year, summer days over forty degrees are normal, and winter brings hard frosts to the gullies and the low ground along Bendigo Creek. A hedge clipped hard in the week before a heatwave will scorch on every freshly exposed leaf; one clipped in late autumn pushes soft new growth straight into the first frost and browns off. So we trim to the calendar as much as to the shape, and on the bush-edge blocks in Spring Gully we also think about what a dense conifer hedge means for a home inside the bushfire overlay.

Which hedge, when

Formal, informal and how high is too high

A formal hedge, box, privet, conifer or photinia clipped to flat faces and a level top, needs cutting at least twice a year to keep the surface tight, and it should always be slightly narrower at the top than the bottom so light reaches the lower leaves and the base does not go bare. An informal hedge, a line of viburnum or lilly pilly allowed to keep its natural outline, is pruned by hand and selectively so it stays soft and flowering. The other question is height. Anything above about three metres means a platform or a climber rather than a trimmer held overhead, and it also means sunlight problems for whoever lives on the south side. We are happy to bring a tall cypress hedge back to a sensible height, but conifers do not regrow from bare wood, so the reduction has to leave green growth on every face or the hedge is finished. That is a conversation to have before the first cut, not after. Anything beyond hedge scale, an old cypress line that has become a row of trees, moves into tree pruning in Bendigo territory, and if a hedge is being removed entirely the row of stumps left behind is covered by our Bendigo stump grinding service.

What a typical Bendigo hedge job looks like

Take a brick veneer in Strathdale with a photinia hedge running the full length of one side boundary, planted thirty-odd years ago and last trimmed hard about five years back. It is four metres tall, a metre and a half thick, leaning over the neighbour's driveway and bare at the bottom. We arrive in spring after the red flush, set up on both sides of the fence with the neighbour's agreement, and take the top down to a level line you can maintain from a step ladder, then cut the faces back to firm growth with a batter that leaves the base wider than the top. The hollow patches are opened to light and fill in over the season. Every clipping goes through the chipper at the kerb and the mulch is yours if you want it. Half a day for two of us, and the hedge comes back denser than before.

We trim hedges in the surrounding suburbs on the same runs, and the hedge trimming in Kangaroo Flat, Strathfieldsaye hedge trimming and hedge trimming in Junortoun pages cover those areas. The main hedge trimming service page and the Bendigo suburb page cover the rest of what we do in the city.

Hedge questions from Bendigo gardeners