Bare Root Hedging (Quick-thorn)? 26 November 2021 at 5:22PM in Greenfingered MoneySaving 3 replies 73 views

Frank99

I am hoping to get some quick thorn hawthorn to grow on the perimeter of the back garden, are bare-root plants any good and what should i do upon receiving them, i heard you need too put them in water first but i'm not sure.

greenbee

I regularly buy bare root hedging. Wherever you buy them from should give you instructions - but you need to unwrap them when they arrive and either plant them or just heel them in to a flowerbed somewhere until you need them. There are lots of websites that can supply the plants, and will calculate how many you need based on the length of the hedge.

You probably want to think about how big you want the plants to be - you need to cut them down by roughly 50% when you first get them in order to make sure that they thicken up from the bottom. 

Farway

Frank99 said:

I am hoping to get some quick thorn hawthorn to grow on the perimeter of the back garden, are bare-root plants any good and what should i do upon receiving them, i heard you need too put them in water first but i'm not sure.

AS GB says above, but the reason for putting in water is to give them a good drink, they may have been stuck, and drying out, in the postal sytem for days, or even weeks if T & M

twopenny

Agree with the above.
See what the roots look like when they arrive. If dry pop them in water as they are. Then if the weather isn't right for planting straight away heel them into a flower bed until it is.
Perfect time to plant. Looking at the vagaries of winter weather take the oportunity to dig the planting area as soon as suitable so it will be an easy job when the weather picks up.