Hedge cutting in Reigate

Privet, yew, holly and laurel boundaries kept neat, with every cutting cleared away.

Hedge cutting in Reigate is mostly evergreen work. The council’s appraisal of the town centre conservation area names privet as the commonest hedge, with yew used for formal hedges and holly, Portuguese laurel and cherry laurel all over the place. On the rural edges it’s hawthorn. Each of those wants cutting in its own way.

We trim, shape and reduce hedges of every size and take all the cuttings away. Main cuts go in between September and February, outside the nesting season, and we look for nests before any work starts. If a hedge needs a summer tidy, we check it first and leave it be if birds are using it.

Lane hedge trimmed beside a tile-hung house

Hedge cutting in Reigate’s old town: privet, yew and laurel

Privet grows fast and wants two or three trims a year to stay dense. Yew is slower and far more forgiving, and it will regrow from old wood, which most conifers won’t. Laurel is the one people get wrong. Run a powered trimmer across cherry laurel and you slice the big leaves in half, and the cut edges go brown. We cut laurel by hand so it stays green. It takes longer. It looks much better.

In the conservation area, beech and hornbeam are treated as later arrivals that don’t sit well with the evergreen character, so if you’re replanting a boundary there, privet or yew is the safer bet.

Hedge trimming rules in the UK, and how we work to them

People often ask about the hedge trimming rules in the UK. The short version: it’s an offence to damage or destroy an active bird’s nest, and most nesting happens in spring and summer. So our main hedge cutting season runs September to February. Lighter summer trims are possible, but only after a proper look inside the hedge. Gardens backing onto the heath or open ground on the edge of town tend to have busy hedges, so we take that check seriously.

Hedge Trimming in Reigate: your questions

Anything else, just ring. You’ll speak to the people who do the work.

Can you bring a tall leylandii or laurel boundary down?

Yes, height and width reductions are part of the job. A big reduction may be staged over two winters so the hedge recovers. Anything that’s really a tree rather than a hedge we leave to a tree specialist.

How often should a privet hedge be cut?

Two or three times a year for a crisp finish, with the main cut in early autumn. Leave it a full year and it gets leggy and gappy at the base.

Will you take the hedge trimmings away?

Every time. Trimmings are bulky and fill a brown bin fast, so we clear them and sweep up before we go.