https://www.hopesgrovenurseries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/hampton-court-750x563.jpeg PLEACHED TREES THE GARDEN DESIGN FAVOURITE

Pleached trees are a garden-design favourite, because they provide an instant leafy screen that looks stylish as soon as it’s planted. They offer privacy for you and they help to muffle noise and that’s becoming more important in our busy world. They provide a living screen that’s far more eco-friendly than a stark wooden fence and they take up little ground space, because the trees are effectively on wooden stilts or legs. This makes them suitable for gardens of all shapes and sizes. They also cast shade and, now that global warming is with us, that is another important consideration.

They can be freestanding and that will allow you to create an elegant, formal avenue to rival Lawrence Johnston’s Stilt Garden at the National Trust’s Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire. Or they can be carefully trained to rise above a low fence or wall to add extra height. Choosing the right thing for you is important because there’s a wide choice of foliage, from deciduous to evergreen and from red-tinted to various shades of green. Some pleached trees will also provide spring blossom and possibly fruit, so careful decisions have to be made about which one suits your space and situation.

Deciduous Options

Deciduous trees are hardier, because they shed their foliage in autumn. Admittedly they leave you with a twiggy framework over winter, but this can look highly attractive when low winter sunshine illuminates the twiggy branches, tightly spiralled buds and trunk.  New foliage unfurls in spring and that really lifts the garden up a notch. It signals the arrival of spring.

Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) is the king of pleached trees and it has a fascinating history because the shady avenue has been a feature of gardens for centuries in this country and Europe. The Queen’s Garden at Kew, laid out in the early 18^th century, contained a sunken garden surrounded on three sides by a pleached hornbeam hedge. It was the private retreat of George II and Queen Caroline and their children.

Hornbeam is a lowland tree of heavier soil and it does well on alluvial soils with a clay or loam content. Those on poorer, soil or on chalky ground would do better with beech. Hornbeam will tolerate acid and alkaline soil, as long as it’s deep, and it’s very hardy and resilient so an exposed spot won’t bother it. The foliage is often mistaken for beech, but the darker green serrated leaves are more substantial, reminding me of a certain brand of thick crinkle-cut potato crisps. Hornbeam foliage emerges two to three weeks earlier than beech so it’s able to flatter late-April and May flowering tulips and woodlanders to great effect. It’s slow-growing and that makes pruning easier.

Beech (Fagus sylvatica) has brighter green foliage that appears in late April, just as our native bluebells appear. The combination of gently nodding cobalt-blue flowers and bright-green foliage on silver-grey wood is an iconic spring statement that should be accompanied by a calling cuckoo in full song. Beech is graceful in growth and it’s always been called the Queen of the Trees. Some of its sweeping graceful lines will add a softness to a line of pleached trees. It will also tolerate shady conditions, something most broad-leafed trees struggle with.

Beech foliage will turn a golden shade of butterscotch in autumn and some of the leaves will cling on over winter. Copper beech, Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea, is also an option. The foliage will emerge a coppery-pink and develop into purple. In larger spaces the field maple, Acer campestre, will provide a soft green haze of three-lobed leaves in summer, before turning butter-yellow in autumn.

The sweet gum or liquidambar (Liquidambar styraciflua) provides deep-red autumn colour when the large leaves colour-up. In summer the maple-like 5- to 7-lobed leaves will shine due to their luscious shape and size. Spherical seedpods, commonly called gumballs may appear, looking rather like small conker cases on a horse chestnut. You’ll need good soil, a bright position and well-drained ground for liquidambar. Look out for the corky grey bark. It’s a handsome feature.

The Kaiser Linden or Kings Lime is a hybrid between the small leaf lime (Tilia cordata) and the large leaf lime (T. platyphyllos) known as T. x europaea. This long-lived hybrid lime is the one most often planted in avenues, most famously on Unter Len Linden in Berlin and that’s where the common name comes from. The heart-shaped leaves are yellow-green to start with, but then darken. The honeydew produced by aphids can be a problem near parking places, so site it carefully. You can pleach this one, or use it to make a stilt garden. You can also plant a hedge in the foreground ,to create a stepped effect.

Blossom-filled Options

Some pleached trees will provide spring blossom, although pruning will restrict the amount of blossom. Crab apples do not need much pruning, just remove any diseased or dead wood, or any crossing wood, in winter. They prefer good soil and they are very hardy and amenable. Crab apples are self-fertile and their pollen, once transported by a bee, will help to pollinate your apple crops so they would make an excellent screen near an orchard. Small crab-apple fruits follow on, often persisting into winter.

‘Evereste’, named after Eve Reste, was introduced around 1980 and it’s one of the best crab apples, with full trusses of white flowers emerging from apple-blossom pink buds. The dark grey-green foliage is a feature too and clusters of small orange to orange-yellow mini apples follow on. This tree was trained against a grey Swedish outbuilding in a 2007 Chelsea Flower show garden that honoured Carl Linneaus. It was a stunner then and it still is. If you want something with long-lasting red fruits, opt for ‘Red Sentinel’. It will scatter red fruits in the lawn throughout winter – a warming sight.

Scarlet hawthorn, Crataegus laevigata ‘Paul’s Scarlet’ produces vivid clusters of deep-pink flowers in late-spring. The deeply-lobed green foliage frames the flowers and dark-red haws follow on by mid-August. These are devoured by birds and the sweetly scented blossom, reminiscent of cake, also attracts a host of pollinators.

Hawthorn is one of your best trees for wildlife and, in theory, it could also attract 149 species of insect in Britain. It’s fourth behind oak (284), willow (266) and birch (229). There are thorns, but not especially savage ones, and this slow-growing hardy screen will need little maintenance. You’ll also be helping wildlife.

The Purple-leafed plum, Prunus cerasifera ‘Nigra’, will provide you with dark-purple foliage and this will really enhance the delicate beauty of the dark-eyed mid-pink blossom. This will need a sunny or bright position and reasonable drainage because ornamental cherries don’t like waterlogged roots. The blossom is early, arriving by early March or sooner, and it’s a good idea to keep the area weed-free so that your pleached cherry trees get off to a good start. Good soil preparation is vital – see Establishing your Pleached Trees below.

Colourful Evergreens

An evergreen screen is often preferred in built-up areas, for all-year round privacy, and this environment will also keep your evergreen screen looking good throughout the year. It won’t be exposed to extreme conditions such as harsh weather or strong wind. Evergreens shed some foliage throughout the year and they are not as hardy as deciduous plants.

Eleagnus x ebbingei is often over-looked, but the silvery foliage is covered with a dusty exudate that sparkles in sunlight, against cinnamon-brown stems. The tiny flowers, which appear in November under the foliage, are highly scented and oval silver-sparkled orange-red fruits can follow. This eleagnus is hardy and able to tolerate windy and coastal positions. It’s fast-growing too, so it will need regular taming, but it grows in sun or partial shade.

Photinia x fraseri ‘Red Robin’ is one of those ubiquitous plants seen again and again, but don’t let familiarity breed contempt, because the new fiery red is a real winter warmer and it lifts the winter garden. This New Zealand hybrid, is very hardy and tolerant of many soils so those of us who can’t grow the acid-loving, ericaceous can still light the winter fire with this.

A Safe Delivery method

Pleached trees are too tall for conventional mail order delivery, so a special team from the nursery deliver them to ensure their safe arrival. Please enquire.

Establishing your Pleached Trees

The important thing is to get your pleached hedge or line of trees established and that will involve good soil preparation. Prepare a planting hole at least twice the size of the plant’s root ball, and allow the ground to settle for a few days. Add plenty of good quality compost or well-rotted farmyard manure, mixed into the soil.

Check the levels when planting, using a cane, making sure that the soil surface of your potted plant is level with the ground.

When planting all new Pleached trees Hopes Grove strongly recommend adding rootgrow to give them the best start in your trees, they are usually supplied as potted plants that can be planted all year round.

Pleached trees need to thoroughly watered every few days in their first growing season. This could be done with a soaker hose, left on for a few hours, or you can tip a can of water on to the plant, very gently, instead. Don’t dribble a hose over them: it does no good at all. They must be thoroughly watered.

About the Author

Val Bourne is a multi-award-winning garden writer, hands on gardener and committed plantaholic. She manages her third of an acre garden without using chemicals – something she has always believed in. Her last book The Living Jigsaw, is all about her eco-friendly garden. She has been interested in the natural world since childhood and has actively tried to influence gardeners to be greener in order to help the survival of our planet. Val has been judging RHS plant trials for the past 16 years and she appears in many publications, including The Daily Telegraph. Val is an Ambassador for The Hardy Plant Society. She actively supports nurseries and gardens in this country.

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