Hedge Trimming Perth

Here’s a question we get asked on almost every hedge job: why has the bottom gone bare?

It’s the same story nearly every time.

Someone has been trimming the hedge with flat, vertical sides, year after year. Looks correct. Feels correct. But a hedge with vertical sides shades its own base, and foliage that never sees light gives up and drops off. By the time the owner notices, there’s a metre of bare sticks at the bottom with a green hat sitting on top.

The fix is a slight taper, wider at the base than at the top, so light reaches all the way down.

It’s a small thing. It’s also the difference between a hedge that’s still solid in ten years and one that has to be pulled out and replanted.

That’s the sort of detail we’ve picked up over 15 years of trimming hedges across Perth.

What our hedge trimming service covers

Regular scheduled trims to hold shape and density
One-off tidy-ups for hedges that have got away from you
Formative shaping on young hedges to build density from ground level up
Staged restoration of overgrown or bare-bottomed hedges
Topiary and formal shaping
Height reduction and reshaping
Screen hedges, boundary hedges, and low border hedges
All clippings and green waste taken away, and the area swept and blown down

We bring our own equipment, keep it sharp and clean, and we send at least two gardeners to every job so a big hedge doesn’t turn into an all-day event.

How often should a Perth hedge be trimmed?

Depends almost entirely on the plant.

Hedge plant	Growth rate	Trims per year	Worth knowing
Murraya (orange jessamine)	Fast	3 to 4	Perth favourite. Handles heat well, reshoots readily from old wood
Viburnum odoratissimum	Fast	3 to 4	Dense and quick. Wants regular attention or it gets woody
Ficus ‘Hillii’	Very fast	4 or more	Superb screen, aggressive roots. Keep it well away from retic, paving and drainage
Lilly pilly (Syzygium, Acmena)	Moderate to fast	3	Psyllid can pimple the new growth. Newer cultivars are far more resistant
Photinia ‘Red Robin’	Moderate to fast	3	Trim to trigger the red flush. Watch for leaf spot in wet, still conditions
Duranta ‘Sheena’s Gold’	Fast	3 to 4	Bright golden foliage, needs regular clipping to stay tight
Pittosporum ‘Silver Sheen’	Moderate	2 to 3	Lovely soft screen, can thin out if left too long between trims
Callistemon ‘Slim’	Moderate	2	Native, waterwise, narrow habit. Trim after flowering
Westringia	Slow to moderate	2	Excellent coastal choice, handles salt wind. Don’t cut hard into old wood
Buxus (box)	Slow	2	Formal look, slow to repair mistakes. Sharp blades matter here
Conifers (cypress, juniper, thuja)	Moderate	1 to 2	Will not reshoot from bare old wood. Trim lightly and never cut past the green

The general principle: little and often beats one hard cut a year. Every time you tip a stem, the plant branches at that point. Frequent light trims are what make a hedge thick.

The best time of year to trim hedges in Perth

Two good windows, and two you’d rather avoid.

Spring, roughly September to November. The main growth flush. Trim now and the hedge fills back in quickly.

Autumn, roughly March to May. Second flush, still warm enough for good recovery, and it sets the hedge up tidy for winter.

Peak summer is the one to be careful with. Cutting hard in January exposes inner foliage that’s spent its whole life shaded, and it sunburns. You’ll get scorched brown patches down the sides of the hedge that take a season to grow out. Light maintenance trims in summer are fine. Hard reductions can wait.

Deep winter isn’t harmful so much as pointless for heavy work. Growth has slowed right down, so any cut just sits there looking like a cut until spring.

One more thing on spring: nesting birds. Native birds are protected in WA under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016, and dense hedges are prime nesting real estate. We check hedges before we start, and if there’s an active nest in there we’ll come back rather than trim around it.

The mistakes that quietly ruin a hedge

Flat vertical sides. Covered above, and it’s the big one. Taper the sides so the base is slightly wider than the top.

Cutting into old bare wood on the wrong species. Murraya, photinia, viburnum and lilly pilly will all push new growth from old wood, so you can reduce them hard and they’ll come back. Conifers won’t. Neither will lavender or rosemary. Cut a cypress hedge back past the green and you’ve made a permanent brown hole in it. Knowing which is which before the blades go in is most of the job.

Blunt blades. A blunt hedge trimmer crushes and tears rather than cutting. The damaged leaf edges brown off within a week and the whole hedge looks scorched. Sharp blades give a clean cut that heals over.

Shearing large-leafed hedges. Run a hedge trimmer over lilly pilly or viburnum and you slice hundreds of big leaves in half. The cut halves brown at the edges and the hedge looks ragged for weeks. On large-leafed plants we’ll hand-prune the visible faces with secateurs, cutting behind the leaf rather than through it. Slower, and the finish is in a different league.

Letting a young hedge run to height first. Very common. People let the plants shoot up to the height they want, then start trimming. You end up with height and no density at the base. Clip a young hedge from the start, even though it feels like you’re holding it back, and you’ll get a solid wall instead of a row of lollipops.

Not cleaning blades between hedges. Fungal problems like photinia leaf spot and box blight travel on equipment, and there are notifiable diseases in the Myrtaceae family that no one wants to be spreading around Perth gardens. We clean down between properties as a matter of course.

Restoring an overgrown or bare hedge

If your hedge is too tall, too wide, or bare at the base, it can usually be brought back. It just isn’t a one-visit job.

For species that reshoot from old wood, we work in stages across two or three seasons.

Typically we’ll reduce one side hard first, let it push new growth from the bare wood, then do the other side the following season, then bring the top down.

Taking it all at once strips the plant of too much leaf area at once and you risk losing it altogether.

We’ll be straight with you on the assessment.

Some hedges are worth restoring.

Some are past it, and you’d be better off replanting with something better suited to the position, which we can also handle.

A couple of Perth-specific things worth checking

Sight lines. Most WA councils have rules about hedge and shrub height near driveways and street corners so drivers can see pedestrians. If your hedge runs to the front boundary, worth a look at your council’s requirements before it gets much taller.

Boundaries. Branches growing over a fence are a common source of neighbourly friction. Easier sorted with a scheduled trim than a conversation over the fence.

Water. Hedges are hungrier and thirstier than most people expect, particularly the fast growers. On Perth’s two-day sprinkler roster, a hedge on a poorly adjusted retic line will thin out and yellow off long before the rest of the garden shows stress. We’ll flag it if we spot the pattern while we’re there, and we can check the reticulation while we’re on site.

Hedge trimming across Perth

Our teams run through Perth’s western and northern suburbs every day, including Trigg, Sorrento, Dianella, Churchlands, Kingsley and surrounds. We can trim on a regular schedule as part of ongoing garden maintenance, or come out for a one-off.

Book a hedge trim

Call Shane, tell us what you’ve got and roughly how long it’s been, and we’ll come and take a look. Free quote, no obligation.

Call 0408 479 961

Honest, reliable and friendly service.

Call us: 0408 479 961