The Versatility of Privet

Don't mind the mess, you're looking at the beginning of a hedge. While clearing acres of Georgia pine forest clogged up with tall, scraggly looking privets it was brought to my attention by Meredithe's aunt, Nancy, that privet is extremely versatile and can be trained into many different shapes and forms. If you'll look back at the post titled "Clearing the Driveway Trees" you can see the privets coming up through the duct work around the base of the tree all tall and scraggly. The bush you see before you is the same exact group of privets, trimmed down to the ground in March. They immediately sprang back to life and started shooting for the sky. If, however, you continue to prune them hard (seriously, HARD, they're persistent) you can train them into a much more attractive bush or hedge. I trimmed these at least four or five times over the summer every time they reached two feet tall I knocked 'em back down to 18 inches or so. They learned rather quickly and began branching out horizontally rather than continuing their concerted effort to go vertical. I plan to keep allowing them to spread around the base of the tree and form a nice little hedge. I may even continue the hedge down the side of the driveway, new plants seem to spring up from everywhere! Removing them from the landscape seemed like a daunting task, turning them into hedges surprisingly seems more manageable.

On a side note, the rectangular area outlined in white in the foreground has two different ground cover transplants that were brought from Meredithe's cousin Tish's house in Monroe, GA. If you can pick them out, the bright green areas are Creeping Jenny and I believe the other ground cover which is the barely visible wider leaved plant is some variety of spiderwort. They seem to be doing ok, but maybe i'll pull out some of their competition next spring and see if I can't get them to really spread around the base of the hedge.