VAL BOURNE suggests suitable plants for hedges to cut the workload

A neighbour of mine wrestles with his evergreen hedge three times a year - this month and again in April and October. Out comes the electric hedge-trimmer, the ladders and planks and another three or four-day saga starts. The gardener, getting on in years, spends an average of 11 bothersome days containing a dull-green hedge that grows both quickly and irregularly. His hedging plant, Lonicera nitida, is entirely unsuitable beast for hedging.

Admittedly, all hedges need maintenance and they are work. But If that hedge were yew, a once-yearly trim - in August - would suffice. It would keep the hedge looking gloriously green and neat all year long. Yet gardeners tend to shun planting yew: they imagine that it will take a hundred years to grow. They are confused by the fact that churchyards often contain trees that are centuries old but yew isn't that slow.

No one can pretend that yew will race away like those dreadful Lleyland conifers. But given between ten and 15 years, yew will form a 5ft high hedge.

The secret is to order 2ft to 3ft high, bare-root whips from a hedging specialist and plant them during the winter, but always when it's free from frost.

These smaller plants will romp away if you enrich the ground when planting. Once planted, feed the hedge every two weeks with a water-on seaweed fertiliser during the growing season - between April and August. Once established your yew hedge will see you out.

The chief advantage with yew is that it can be taken back to bare wood and it can still regenerate. Lleyland hedges can never be cut back into dead wood. They just die and they also only have an average 40-year life span.

Holly can make an excellent evergreen hedge, too, but it's much slower. It's a 20-year project at least. You could either use our prickly burglar-proof native Ilex aquifolium or the rounder-leaved, kinder hybrid Ilex x altaclerensis. If deciduous hedges are required beech (Fagus sylvatica) and hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) both form attractive green backdrops. Both look similar, but hornbeam comes into leaf earlier and provides a green backdrop to the garden by late April. Whereas beech often waits until mid-May. For this reason alone I favour the crimped, bright-green leaves of hornbeam over the shiny, soft-leaved later beech.

In any case, beech is only happy on lighter, well-drained soil. If you have heavier, damp soil you have to choose hornbeam.

When planting go for 2ft to 3ft bare-root whips and plant them 18in apart. Dig the soil well and add organic matter. If you choose a double row, stagger the planting. Each row needs to be 18in apart and each whip 15in apart. Plants cost about 90p each and in five years your hedge will be a substantial feature - like the one in the picture.

Beech is also harder to establish and there are often losses, basically because beech has shallow roots. New plants often suffer from beech aphid, too.

The hedging specialists Buckingham Nurseries (www.hedging.co.uk, tel. 01280 822133) have a huge range of hedging plants and they offer advice as well. There are also sample hedges on their site.