Kangaroo Flat has more hedges than most Bendigo suburbs, for a simple reason: it has more fences. The post-war streets grew screening hedges of cypress and photinia along their long side boundaries, and the estates towards Big Hill and the Lockwood side are planting lilly pilly and pittosporum by the hundred metres for privacy on small lots. Hedge trimming in Kangaroo Flat therefore runs from a knee-high box border to a six-metre cypress wall, and the cut that suits one will wreck the other.
Quick answer
TB'S Trees trims and reshapes hedges of every species and height in Kangaroo Flat (3555), from formal box to overgrown cypress, and takes the clippings away. Ring 0498 609 887 and we will quote it from the species and the length.
Hedge species and how each one wants to be cut
Photinia (Red Robin). The most common formal hedge in the older streets. It tolerates hard cutting and will shoot from old wood, so a neglected photinia can be brought back over a couple of seasons. The red new growth means it looks its best trimmed twice a year, after the spring flush and again in late summer.
Lilly pilly. The estate favourite for tall, narrow privacy screens. It grows fast and recovers from most treatment, but in Bendigo the psyllid that pimples the leaves is common, and a dense, unpruned lilly pilly holds the pests better than a trimmed one. Regular light trims keep it tight; a hard reduction is best done in early spring so the new growth hardens before the frost.
Pittosporum (Silver Sheen and similar). Soft, quick, and prone to going leggy and hollow inside if only the surface is sheared. It needs the occasional deeper cut into the body of the hedge so light gets in and the base stays clothed.
Viburnum. The tough choice for a dry, frosty site, and it makes an excellent informal hedge if pruned with secateurs to a looser shape rather than sheared flat.
Cypress and other conifers. Leighton green and the old golden cypress hedges along the side fences are the ones that catch people out. Conifers only carry green growth on the outer shell; cut back into the brown wood and it stays brown forever. A cypress hedge must be trimmed a little and often, always leaving some green, and one that has been let go can be tidied and topped but never brought back to a narrower profile.
Technique: formal, informal, taper and height
A formal hedge is cut on a line, and the line that matters most is not the top but the sides. We trim every hedge slightly wider at the base than the top so the lower growth gets sun and does not thin out into bare legs; vertical or overhanging sides are the commonest reason a five-year-old hedge is bald at the bottom. The top is cut last, to a string line if the run is long, and on a slope it is either stepped or run parallel to the ground depending on what looks right from the street.
Informal hedges, the viburnums, grevilleas and bottlebrush screens, are pruned with secateurs and loppers rather than sheared, taking whole shoots back to a fork so the plant keeps its natural habit and its flowers. Anything over two and a half metres needs a platform or ladder and a second person, and a wall of cypress at six metres is a climbing job with a chainsaw, not a hedge trim.
Kangaroo Flat conditions: frost, heat and dry ground
Timing is where local knowledge earns its keep. Kangaroo Flat gets hard frosts from May through to September on the flats along the creek, and a hedge trimmed in late autumn pushes soft new growth straight into them. We do the last big cut of the year by early autumn and leave winter for the deciduous and the cypress only. At the other end, a trim on a forty-degree day in January burns the freshly exposed inner leaves, so summer work is done early in the morning or held over for a cooler spell.
The ground is the other factor. On the old diggings towards Crusoe Reservoir the soil is shallow and stony and hedges there need watering after a hard cut or they stall. On the deeper creek flats the same species grow twice as fast and want trimming twice as often. In the newer estates the hedges sit in a strip of imported soil over compacted clay, and we see plenty of lilly pilly rows with the roots rotting in a badly drained trench. The bushfire overlay on the reserve edge changes the conversation about conifers, too: a tall cypress hedge close to a house on the Big Hill side is a fuel load, and part of our advice there is whether it should be lowered, thinned or swapped for something less flammable.
What you get with TB'S Trees on hedge work in Kangaroo Flat
The right cut for the plant
Shears for the formals, secateurs for the informals, a chainsaw for the cypress walls; tool and timing matched to the species so the hedge recovers instead of sulking.
Reshaping, not just tidying
Overgrown photinia, hollow pittosporum and leggy lilly pilly can be brought back to a proper taper over a season or two, to a plan.
Tall hedges done safely
Anything above head height is trimmed from a platform or ladder with a spotter, and the big cypress runs along the old side fences are treated as insured tree work.
Clippings gone
Every cutting is raked, chipped and removed, the paths are blown and the beds are left clean.
Where a hedge has really grown into a line of trees, the job becomes reduction or removal, covered on the tree lopping in Kangaroo Flat and tree removal in Kangaroo Flat pages. If old hedge stumps are in the way of a new fence, see stump grinding in Kangaroo Flat. The Kangaroo Flat suburb page lists what we do locally, and the hedge trimming service page covers our approach for the Bendigo region. We trim the same species over the fence in Golden Square and further out in Maiden Gully.
Hedge trimming questions from Kangaroo Flat gardens
A tidy hedge, cut the right way
Ring TB'S Trees on 0498 609 887 for hedge trimming in Kangaroo Flat, from a single photinia to a whole boundary of cypress. Free quotes, clippings removed, fully insured.