replace the whole front hedge yourself ..how hard could it be?

Evidentally, privet bushes have a lifespan and our 24 privet hedge was reaching its end when we bought our house. 

Slowly over the first two years we lived here, whole chunks of our 6 foot tall hedge would grow more sparse, leaving windows in an otherwise solid wall of prettiness. 

I tried to fortify, I tied up and supported the weakening branches, I fed the soil...but there was no real hope.

To quote Apollo 13, “from where I’m sitting, the hedge is dying. “ …or something like that.

Planting new privet in the dead spaces wasn’t really an option, although, I did try. The problem, of course was the difference in maturity of the plants. The few that were still living, were huge.   And the new ones, were at best, well…not huge.

SO…the hedge had to go.

A local nursery was willing to remove and plant new shrubs for the low low price of 3500.00. 

Seems fair, I guess, but this would have left us with tiny little saplings, meaning, no hedge (or money, frankly) for a few years, as that price would get us 24 12” plants. 

It felt like a lot of trouble for a hedge that wouldn’t even look or feel like a hedge for 3-5 years.

I figured, if we could remove the old privet and plant the new shrubs of our choosing OURSELVES, we could probably afford to get much more mature plantings.

And, I was right. 

1st order of business was to decide on what kind of hedge we wanted. I researched the following

1. Forsythia- beautiful, but messy and a little unwieldy for the whole length of our house, so, no.

2. Boxwood - also beautiful, but not quite unwieldy enough, in my opinion. I wanted a less manicured look this time…and also, I’m not sure boxwood does so great where I live, so that was out.

3. Privet- . No. We had done it and I didn’t even love it that much.

4. Lilac - I can think of nothing negative to say about lilac…so lilac it was.

I looked at two varieties that were touted as good hedge material…miss Kim and Korean lilacs. 

Miss Kim (on the left) has a bigger leaf whereas the Dwarf Korean (right) have smaller more plentiful leaves.

They both grow to about 5-8 feet tall (if left unchecked) but I preferred the Miss Kim. There is something about the shape and green of the leaf that I like…so that’s what we went with.

Prevailing wisdom says to plant them about 2 1/12 feet apart, so after doing the math, we settled on 24 lilac bushes, which we got at roughly 30 inches tall...about 2 seasons beyond what the landscaper would have provided!

That was the easy part.

Next I had to prove my theory that we would be able to remove the old privet ourselves, so I got a shovel. This was nuts.

I dug out the first few (at the rate of one a day) before I realized how much smarter it would be to chop them way down first. Some of the branches just fell right off in my hands, 

but some did not. just look at that sad little not-hedge.

This project is not for the feint hearted. My goodness, but those roots. 

It ended up being one of those projects that seemed like a good idea at first, and you work on it for a few days and then you wake up and look outside the window and are reminded of how much work you have in front of you and you almost cry. 

But you don’t.

You dig. You dig and you throw branches in a pile.

It took a month. Yes, a month of digging, but we got them all.

24, mostly dead, but apparently with still very strong roots, privet.

All gone. 

By this time, the nursery was ready to drop off our new lilacs. We needed a little rest, so they sat in the yard for a few days.

The plan for planting.

After the privet were removed, we churned bout 50 bags of mushroom compost into the soil. We figured that this was our opportunity to give these new lilacs their best shot, so we went for it.

After the soil was fortified, we started digging and planting. 

Everything I read warned of the hedge wavering, and not being straight or balanced visually, so we were pretty crazy about placement. 

After our math checked out, we settled on placing the center of the hole 26 inches back from the side walk and exactly 32 inches between each plant…

We used a yard stick before each hole was dug and then we staked and ran string the length of the project to ensure that we were on target. 

It was a lot.

But it worked.

You could land a plane on this thing.

So they say that newly planted bushes have a 3 year trajectory of...

sleep, creep and leap

I have found this to be true…we didn’t see huge gains in the first year or even two, but, 

Last summer was our leap summer.

They were gorgeous. 

We only get about two weeks of full flower and it regularly happens on the last week of May, which is great for Memorial Day parties.

But the lilacs have beauty in all the seasons…

right now, I am loving the brownish gold patina that is spreading through the leaves…I'll go outside and post a pic tomorrow...we have a few more weeks before they all fall down.