limbed-up privet
- Subject: limbed-up privet
- From: "Tiede, Karen E" k*@eds.com
- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 08:04:27 -0400
> Privet is so maligned, poor
> ole' plant, nobody really likes privet.
>>There is a landscape architect featured in a gardening mag within the last
year who did awesome things with hedges. As for privets, he limbed them way
up and a row of what must have been mature bushes limbed up like that was
quite dramatic.
I'm doing this with one of my little hollies--ilex vomitoria (yaupon).
Hated it on principle but learned it was the last shrub the original owner
of this house planted before she died and therefore had some value to the
people who remembered her. Previous occupant kept it at the meatball stage;
I let it go (admittedly, out of laziness) one summer and realized it had
"tree" potential. Pruned it up from the base and now it looks like one of
the shrubs you see at the beach where the wind and sand carve the lower
limbs. Much more interesting than a stiff and spiky meatball. (Big burford
hollies can be interesting when you do this, too.)
The worst problem with privet is the birds. The church behind me has a big
overgrown patch of untamed privet. Birds eat the berries and perch in my
pecan tree, and I get to pull privet seedlings out of the lawn all summer.
I'll find a straight row of baby privets in the grass--and look up to see a
branch exactly parallel to the seedlings.
Feel free to stop by and harvest a hedgeful. Central NC, USDA zone 7.
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