- Professional lawn and Garden care service across Bay of plenty / Waikato
Species decides everything. Some hedges come back from a hard cut, some take two years to forgive it, and some never do. We work that out before we cut, not after.
If you know the species, great. If not, that’s what the site visit is for.
Left applies anywhere in the country. Right is what Pāpāmoa does to it.
Pittosporum, photinia and camellia re-shoot readily from bare wood. Griselinia and buxus recover but slowly. Conifers never do — cut past the green and it stays brown permanently.
It is the coastal hedge of choice because it handles salt. It also recovers slowly from a hard cut, so we stage reductions over two or three trims rather than taking it back in one go.
A hedge should be trimmed slightly narrower at the top than the base. Trimmed wider at the top it shades its own base and goes bare below.
Constant onshore pressure leans a hedge and thins the windward face. We trim the exposed side more often and more lightly, which is what holds the profile without opening it up.
Autumn to early winter for most jobs. Flowering hedges like camellia and photinia get cut straight after flowering, or you remove next season’s buds.
No frost here means less risk from a late cut. But spring is nesting season — under the Wildlife Act it is an offence to disturb native birds’ nests, so we check dense hedges before starting.
A mature hedge reduction produces far more material than people expect, and all of it has to be loaded and taken somewhere.
Down the beach end the houses sit close to the boundary with no vehicle access past them, so every branch is barrowed to the street. That labour is real and it goes in the quote, not on the day.
On a boundary hedge we will write down exactly what is being cut so both households can see it before anyone starts a saw.
This is the category where getting it wrong is hardest to undo. Some of it cannot be undone at all.
Half a day to a full day depending on length, height and how far the barrow has to go.
What it is, what that allows, and exactly where the cut line will be. Written down on a boundary hedge.
Through spring, before anything starts. If we find an active nest we reschedule.
Slight taper, windward face lighter. Sides before top on anything thin at the base.
Not one big pile at the end. On tight sections everything is barrowed to the street.
All of it on the trailer, off to be composted, then a photo through.
It is the most common fault we see, and it is geometry rather than gardening.
Volume and carry-out drive this more than length does, so we look before pricing.
A boundary hedge kept at its current height usually runs $150 to $400. Mature reductions and tree work are quoted after a look, because the volume and the carry-out are what set the number.
Book a lookTwo things drive every number here. First, volume — a twenty-year-old griselinia boundary produces several cubic metres in an afternoon, far more than the same hedge at half the age. Second, carry-out — on a tight beach-end section with no vehicle access past the house, every branch is barrowed to the street by hand. We would rather have that in the quote than discover it on the day.
Autumn is the window for most of it. Spring needs care for a reason people rarely think about.
April to June is the main window. Growth has eased so cuts hold their shape, wounds heal before hard weather, and disease spreads far less than in warm humid conditions. September to November needs care — that is nesting season, and under the Wildlife Act disturbing native birds’ nests is an offence, so we check dense hedges before starting and reschedule if we find one.
Two quotes said they’d take the hedge down by a metre and a half. Lawnify came out, told me it was macrocarpa and cutting that far would leave it brown for good, and staged it over two seasons instead. Nobody else even looked at what it was.
The ones that come up on nearly every hedge we quote here.
It depends entirely on the species, which is why we identify it before quoting rather than after cutting. Pittosporum, photinia, camellia and corokia re-shoot readily from bare wood and can be taken well back. Griselinia and buxus will recover but slowly, so those are better staged over two or three trims. Conifers — leylandii, macrocarpa, thuja, cryptomeria — will not regrow from brown wood at all, and cutting past the green shell leaves a permanent hole.
Almost certainly salt burn rather than disease. Onshore wind carries salt and browns whichever face takes the weather, while the sheltered side of the same plant looks perfectly fine. It is exposure, not illness. We trim windward faces lightly so foliage always protects the growth behind, and where a plant simply cannot cope on this coast we will say so rather than keep trimming a losing battle.
Almost always because it has been trimmed wider at the top than at the base, so it shades its own lower foliage. Leaves only survive where light reaches them. The fix is to re-cut it to a slight taper — narrower at the top — and let light back in. Whether the bare part refills depends on the species; the ones that re-shoot from bare wood will, conifers will not.
Carefully. Under the Wildlife Act it is an offence to disturb native birds’ nests, so through spring we check canopies and dense hedges before starting and will reschedule if we find an active nest. Light shaping is usually fine; heavy hedge and tree work is better booked either side of the peak, which is one reason we push people toward autumn anyway.
No — topping is the one job genuinely worth refusing. A mature tree responds to it with a mass of weak, fast regrowth attached to a large wound, so within a few years the tree is back to the same size but structurally worse and more likely to fail. A proper reduction takes weight off selectively and keeps the tree balanced. It costs more once and far less across twenty years.
Generally you can cut anything on your side of the boundary, including overhanging growth, back to the line. Cutting the far face, or reducing the overall height of a genuinely shared hedge, needs your neighbour’s agreement. In practice a conversation and a written scope sorts nearly all of these before anyone starts a saw, and we are happy to put that in writing so both households can see it. General information rather than legal advice.
They leave on our trailer and disposal is already in your quoted price. It matters more here than in mowing because a mature hedge reduction produces far more volume than people expect. If you would rather keep the chip on site as mulch, tell us at the quoting stage and we will leave it wherever you want it.
Hedge work usually gets booked alongside one of these.
