Hornbeam - pleached

Hornbeam has classically been trimmed and framed to make a pleach (basically a hedge on a stem!). It readily lends itself to this with its growth habit and, given some basic annual maintenance, is easy to keep in this shape. Pleached Hornbeam is ideally suited to screening above 6 feet fences or walls, which is the tallest allowed without planning permission, and allows privacy from overlooking first floor windows and the like. Our plants have a 6 foot stem (approximately) and a 5foot (wide) by 4 foot head. For optimum density, we usually recommend a planting spacing of 180cm (6ft) from stem to stem.

Pleached trees are and excellent way of creating privacy over the top of a 180cm tall tall or fence. Although often "everbrown" (retaining many of the brown leaves during winter, providing additional screening), Hornbeam is still a deciduous tree, and as such is exempt from the "high hedge" restrictions which would apply to evergreens. As the head continues to fill in over subsequent years, and with a little annual maintenance, it will be sufficiently dense and twiggy for the frame to be removed (or to be allowed to come apart on its own) and for it to then be treated like a hedge on a stick!

Available as a pleached head 150cm wide by 120cm high on a 180cm stem.