UK Grown Hedging
UK Grown Hedging
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Holly

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Holly

Holly is renowned for its vibrant, evergreen beauty, and the varieties within this category, such as English Holly, Nellie R Stevens Holly, and Variegated Holly, are no exception. These plants are primarily evergreen, retaining their lush, glossy leaves throughout the year, with some varieties showcasing semi-evergreen or deciduous characteristics. The typical aesthetics of Holly include dark green foliage, often accompanied by bright red or yellow berries that contrast beautifully against winter landscapes. The Variegated Holly stands out with its striking leaves edged in cream or yellow, adding a splash of light to any garden setting. These varieties not only offer visual appeal but also provide a rich texture and colour that can enhance any garden throughout the seasons.

Benefits for Nature

Holly plants offer significant benefits to nature. Their dense foliage provides excellent shelter for birds and wildlife, while the flowers are a valuable source of nectar for bees and other pollinators during the spring and summer months. The berries, a hallmark of the Holly plant, serve as an essential food source for birds and small mammals, especially during the harsh winter months when food is scarce. Furthermore, Holly plants contribute to carbon sequestration, capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and helping to mitigate climate change. Their robust root systems also play a crucial role in enhancing soil health and preventing erosion.

Landscaping and Design

In terms of landscaping and design, Holly plants are incredibly versatile. They can be used as striking standalone features or as part of a mixed border, providing year-round interest and structure. Holly is particularly popular for hedging due to its dense growth habit, which creates a robust and attractive boundary that enhances privacy and security. Additionally, the sculptural qualities of Holly make it an excellent choice for topiary, allowing gardeners to create a range of shapes and designs that add a formal or whimsical touch to gardens and landscapes. Whether used for hedging, as specimen trees, or in topiary form, Holly plants are a fantastic way to add elegance and wildlife value to any outdoor space.

Available Forms and Uses

These plants are available in the form of Hedging, Trees, and Topiary, offering gardeners a wealth of options for incorporating Holly into their landscapes. Hedging provides a dense, evergreen barrier that is both beautiful and functional, offering privacy and wind protection. As trees, Holly varieties like English Holly and Nellie R Stevens can become majestic focal points, with their glossy leaves and bright berries adding colour and interest throughout the year. Topiary forms allow for creative expression in the garden, with Holly’s dense foliage lending itself well to intricate designs and shapes. Whether you’re looking to create a secluded garden nook, a vibrant wildlife haven, or a meticulously crafted garden feature, Holly provides the versatility and beauty to achieve your vision.

Incorporating Holly into your garden or landscape design with Harrod Outdoors not only enhances the aesthetic appeal of your outdoor space but also supports local ecosystems and wildlife, making it a choice that’s as responsible as it is beautiful. Explore the possibilities with Holly and transform your garden into a year-round haven of greenery and life.

In our range of hedging, we have plants native from all around the world, in different sizes and colours and so it is important that you choose the best hedge for you and your garden. The hedging plants are available in different densities and root types, all which require different shadings and soil types that will affect the success growth rate of your hedge.

A common mistake by some customers is choosing a hedge purely based on its colours and appearance, without checking if the conditions of their garden are suitable for the hedging. This results in the hedging not growing well and the customer is left disappointed. For example, some gardens are more shaded and so hedging plants like Green Beech and Red Robin wouldn’t be ideal. There are also gardens in open areas where hedging like hornbeam won’t offer any wind protection and so a denser hedging like Leylandii would have been a better choice.

We are very proud of our design product filter on our store page that can help ensure you will receive the perfect hedge for you. The filter works by entering your garden’s information and then giving you the ideal hedging options that are guaranteed to grow well in your garden providing you maintain the hedge following our expert advice.

Hedging is a great alternative to fencing or brick walls for your garden because it adds more colour and nature to your garden, whilst being the most affordable option. Some of our smaller hedging plants can create a brilliant hedge for just under £100 and the hedging will last for years, providing you take our advice on how to maintain the hedge.

By using hedging as an alternative to brick walls and fencing for the boundaries of your garden, you can create the illusion of extra space and they can be used to create patterns and structures that will elevate your garden’s beauty.  The hedging, especially our denser species, will still offer amazing privacy for your garden, as well as wind and noise protection.

At Harrods Outdoor, we are passionate about the environment and will always encourage people to make their gardens as green as possible to help our planet and our local wildlife. Planting hedging is a great way to do this as it can provide food and shelter for birds and insects, especially for those in an urban area where the wildlife may struggle to find a home.

Including hedging to your garden can also increase both the appearance and value of your property, as research shows property has a higher price on roads containing hedging and trees. The use of it in a landscaped garden can also attract more buyers for your home.

The technique of planting hedging will differ slightly depending on the root type and the species, but often the process is the same and not too difficult. We have created these step by step instructions below to help you with the process, but as always if you have any further questions feel free to email or ring us for our help.

  1. Mark out the area where you want to plant your hedge, you can work this out by using the number of hedging plants you have and dividing it by our recommended plants per meter.
  2. When you have the chosen length of your hedge, mark it out with a bit of string so you have a straight line.
  3. Then mark out the width of you hedge, this is usually just double the width of your root system.
  4. Once you happy with how the markings look, you can dig out your trench. When digging, it’s important to dig down about double the depth of the roots of the hedging.
  5. If you can, you should enrich your soil with good organic matter and nutrients (compost, manure or a fertilising mixture will work well). This isn’t mandatory but is highly recommend for healthy strong root growth.
  6. Pack your soil down so that when you add your plants, their stems will start right where the soil starts. Be sure to remove any air pockets during this process to avoid any front damage to the plants during winter.
  7. Now add your plants, remembering to use our planting density recommendation to ensure your roots have enough space to grow without disturbing the neighbouring plants.
  8. Add the soil back around the plants so they are buried nicely underground.
  9. Finally, you should water the plants, which will help them to root into the ground faster and push any remaining air pockets to the surface, removing the risk of frost.

After care is just as important as this planting process, you need to to ensure that you plants are well watered for the first year or two until the roots go deep enough to maintain enough water by themselves. You can also add more nutrients like bone meal through the first few years to ensure the hedging has a strong growth, but if your soil is already rich in nutrients, this won’t be needed.

With bare root plants it is important to ensure that when you are planting the hedge, the ground is not frozen and if there is a delay when you’re planting them, ensure they are kept warm and the roots are kept moist. When you plant bare root hedging it is a good idea to coat the roots in a rooting gel to help the plant roots grow faster at the start of the growing season. This gel or powder can be found on https://www.ebay.co.uk,  https://www.amazon.co.uk or many garden centres as well. When planting root balls you don’t have to move the burlap or net packaging around the roots you can just plant them how they are as the burlap will dissolve over time and decay into nothing but more food for the plant.

As well as this, the planting density should always be correct because roots need enough space to absorb enough nutrients, vitamins and water, but don’t plant them too far away also as you will lose the appearance of a thick hedge. We have provided a recommended planting density for you to follow for each product to ensure you get the best growth possible.

Our larger specimens typically have a lower planting density, around 2 or 3 plants per metre. But for our smaller plants we recommend the planting density to be around 5 to 7 plants per metre. This is because our bigger plants cover a much larger area so there are fewer needed to create the ideal thick hedge you desire. Our larger plants are slightly more expensive than our smaller ones, but it is noteworthy that you will need to plant less larger plants per meter so you can save money by buying less plants in the first place.

 

 

We are proud of our efficient delivery service of our hedging, where we take the time to water and feed the plants before they are packaged for delivery to ensure the plants are of the highest standard whilst still keeping our prices low. We always have multiple people working on our website and phones to ensure our customers are always updated and able to have their questions heard. We are also proud of our eco-friendly standards, in which we make sure we re-use our pots, reducing our use of single-use products. Harrods Outdoor actively supports Ecosia, https://www.ecosia.org/, a search engine that funds the planting of trees across the planet to counter the effects of deforestation.