Trim or remove leylandii?

evoke

The house i'm intending to purchase has 2-3 laylandii trees planted along the front garden front wall (i.e. at the pavement end). The trees are slightly taller than the house itself. They do provide a decent bit of privacy but I think they are a bit too tall. There are also other shrubs and another much smaller tree in the front garden.

The distance to the front of the house is around 25 feet.

Should I have the leylandii cut down and the roots killed or have them trimmed right down so they still provide a degree of privacy? I've not looked in detail but there are 2-3 of them in a bunch in one corner of the front garden, by the footpath.

marmitepotato

Take them out, put up a fence. We had the same problem, the trees dont respond well to hard trimming (as we found out). They needed cutting twice a year to keep them neat, in the end they went a patchy brown and looked awful. We took them out, hard work but worth it. we put in a fence for privacy and grew climbers up it to make it less 'new' looking. Hope this helps you.

jackieb

We removed 8 when we moved here. My brother has a leylandi hedge and I think it's okay if you start off by trimming it into a hedge, but once they grow too tall I don't think they're any good once cut back.

evoke

Any ideas on how long it would take to remove three leylandii trees and the costs? The trees are slightly taller than the house.

jackieb

I have no idea about the costs. My husband took down ours by himself and it took his a weekend. He had to saw up the trunk and we hired a van to take the wood away. But you have to be careful. He had to climb the tree to saw off the top branches first. We were quoted £400 to remove one tree (not a leylandi).

marmitepotato

We took ours out ourselves and got a 'registered with the council' man to come and take our 10 trees away, that was the biggest expence for removing the trees and cost us £100. It took OH a day to cut the trees down then it took us another day to dig the roots out, but we did have 10 trees. After that we had the fence put in. we never regretted taking the trees out, OH does not miss clambering around on top of ladders to trim them every year!! Hope this hepls you.

amcluesent

Def. get cut down and the stumps ground out so you can replant at once. This sort of work seems to get charged at around £60/hr.

That said, if you can get the gang to come late on Friday before knocking off, working cash-in-hand, it'll not take them long!

Ken68

Digging out live roots, Evoke, is a real hard job. You could saw down as low as possible now and remove the roots (easy) after about a year or two.

jackieb

Ken68 wrote: »

Digging out live roots, Evoke, is a real hard job. You could saw down as low as possible now and remove the roots (easy) after about a year or two.

My husband bought a long drill bit from eBay, drilled the stumps and then put some tree stump and root killer down it.

Jake'sGran

jackieb wrote: »

We removed 8 when we moved here. My brother has a leylandi hedge and I think it's okay if you start off by trimming it into a hedge, but once they grow too tall I don't think they're any good once cut back.

My daughter & hubby did this and they used the more attractive golden Leylandii. I explained about the height they should let them get to before starting to prune. They followed these instructions and I am really pleased that they now have a nice size/thickness of hedge.

We removed all Lleylandii that we had foolishly planted in our garden but then, the couple who back on to us, planted a row of them. They must have wanted the privacy. He was keeping them tidy at the beginning but I have noticed now that one in the corner nearest to us is getting very tall. I am trying to pluck up the courage to ask him if he will be cutting it down a bit this year.

After some people had fallen out seriously about this plant the government were said to be passing a bill about the max height it could be but I don't know if people know about this. Local councils were to have the power to reduce the height of offending trees.

themull1

I would cut them down as well.