Hedge Trimming for Epsom Fence Lines and Front Yards

A hedge in Epsom does a job a fence cannot: screening the neighbour's upstairs windows, hiding the highway, softening a long run of Colorbond. It only keeps doing that if it gets cut on time. Here is how to tell yours has slipped, what a trim looks like, and where the rules on height and boundaries sit.

Signs an Epsom hedge is overdue

• Gaps at the bottom. The top has been left wider than the base, shading it out. Once a lilly pilly or photinia goes bare low down it is slow to refill, so catch this one early.
• Leggy tips with nothing behind them. Part the outer leaves and it is all brown stick inside, because no cut has told the growth to branch.
• It is over the fence, the path or the driveway. On an estate block with a 900 mm side path, a hedge that has put on 300 mm each side has closed the path completely.
• Higher than you can reach. Most people stop trimming at arm's reach on a step ladder, and the hedge keeps going. Screening hedges in Epsom are commonly two and a half to three metres by the time we get the call.
• Pimples on the lilly pilly, spots on the photinia. Psyllid on Syzygium and leaf spot on Red Robin both worsen in dense, unclipped growth.
• Wind rock. A tall, top-heavy hedge on Epsom's open ground rocks in a northerly and loosens at the root. Bringing the height back is the fix.

A typical hedge trimming job in Epsom

Take a lot in Elmwood or Barlow Hills with a run of lilly pilly along the back fence, planted five or six years ago to block the view from the two-storey behind. It is now three metres tall, a metre wide at the top, pushing over the neighbour's side, and the last trim was a year ago with a hedger that reached two-thirds of the way up. We arrive with a long-reach hedger, a platform and drop sheets. The top comes down to the agreed height, a comfortable margin above the fence so it still screens the upstairs windows, and we take it back to a slight taper so the base gets light. The neighbour's side is trimmed to the boundary with their say-so, since both faces are easier in one visit. Clippings go onto sheets, through the chipper on the street, and the mulch goes back on the hedge line to hold moisture through summer. Two people, a couple of hours, and the side path exists again.

Formal hedges out the front, usually low box or a photinia strip along the driveway, get a string line and a level; informal screening hedges are shaped to look natural but still tapered. Conifer rows on the older blocks between Howard Street and the Midland Highway, mostly Leighton green cypress from the farmlet days, are trimmed only in the green: cut a cypress back into brown wood and that face stays brown for good, so with those we hold the line rather than reduce, and if a row has gone too far we say so.

Species and timing on Epsom blocks

The hedges we see most in Epsom are lilly pilly (often the compact Syzygium selections estate landscapers favour), photinia Red Robin, pittosporum Silver Sheen, viburnum, and the cypress rows already mentioned. Murraya, so common up north, struggles with Bendigo frosts and rarely makes a good hedge here. Lilly pilly takes a trim any time it is growing, with late spring and late summer the sweet spots, and should not be cut hard going into a frosty winter. Photinia is best cut after the red spring flush has hardened, then again in mid summer. Pittosporum can go two or three times a season; viburnum after flowering. All prefer light, frequent cuts over one savage one, which is the whole argument for a scheduled visit instead of a rescue job.

Estate rules, the fence line, and the neighbour's side

Most of Epsom's estates were sold with covenants or design guidelines, and many say something about front fences and front-yard planting heights. They vary by estate and stage, so read your title documents before planting a front hedge that wants to be two metres tall. Rear and side hedges are generally your call, subject to the normal neighbour rules, and the City of Greater Bendigo asks that nothing overhangs the footpath or blocks sightlines at driveways and street corners.

On boundaries, Victorian law is straightforward: you may cut back growth that overhangs your side, up to the boundary line and no further, and the cuttings technically belong to the hedge owner. On Epsom's close-set blocks the best result is a conversation over the fence and one crew trimming both faces on the same day, which we are happy to arrange. A hedge planted on the line is shared, and both owners should agree before it is reduced. Where a screening hedge has become a row of small trees, the job shifts into reduction territory under tree lopping in Epsom; where an old row needs to come out completely, stumps and all, see tree removal in Epsom and stump grinding in Epsom.

We keep hedges the same way across the creek in Huntly, down the highway in White Hills and central Bendigo, and over in California Gully. The general approach to formal and informal hedges is on the main hedge trimming page, and everything else we do here is on the Epsom suburb page.

Hedge questions from Epsom neighbours