Prickly hedging for security

[bluecar]

Hello all.

We are looking to supplement our palisade fencing with prickly hedging since the palisade fencing has proofed a deterrent, but has been climbed over several times. Hopefully, combined with a prickly dense hedge this will make it harder.

What would be your suggestions for us to use.

Regards

Bluecar

[bluecar]

[DrJohnH]

Hello all.

We are looking to supplement our palisade fencing with prickly hedging since the palisade fencing has proofed a deterrent, but has been climbed over several times. Hopefully, combined with a prickly dense hedge this will make it harder.

What would be your suggestions for us to use.

Regards

Bluecar

Try pyracantha:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=431

Just make sure you have your tetanus jabs up to date when you are pruning them...ouch!

[Digeroo]

Pyracanthas get a bug and then look awful.  What about gooseberry?  Blackberry grow faster.  And what about Tayberry they are vicious.   
Farmers here use hawthorns.

[bionear2]

Pyracantha or the Burnett Rose, both living barbed wire!

[tricia]

I second that - avoid Pyracantha! I planted a Pyracantha hedge as a deterrent some years back. It was fine for a couple of years then parts of it would look as though it had died but recover somewhat the following year. Then in 2015 the foliage all turned brown and it all looked so unsightly I had it rooted out completely. If was lovely to see the old stone wall revealed again, but not feeling secure as the wall is only about 130cm high I had the height extended with vertical wooden feathered panels. Looks good painted the same colour as my shed.

Tricia 

[DrJohnH]

I second that - avoid Pyracantha! I planted a Pyracantha hedge as a deterrent some years back. It was fine for a couple of years then parts of it would look as though it had died but recover somewhat the following year. Then in 2015 the foliage all turned brown and it all looked so unsightly I had it rooted out completely. If was lovely to see the old stone wall revealed again, but not feeling secure as the wall is only about 130cm high I had the height extended with vertical wooden feathered panels. Looks good painted the same colour as my shed.

Tricia 

It sounds like you had fireblight- there are supposedly resistant varieties of Pyracantha (Saphyr cultivars), but I also like the idea of a berry hedge or hawthorn/quickthorn.

[Redalder]

Blackthorn, vicious spines with lovely white blossom and sloe berries for making sloe gin. Rosa Rugosa: grows fast dense and very prickly, lovely flowers and berries.

[PondDragon]

Hawthorn is about as ferociously spiny as Blackthorn (so long as you get one of the more prickly varieties), and has the advantage of not suckering.

[johhnyco15]

rosa rugosa is really good very fast growing perfumed flowers great hips in the winter its a winner in my book

[Beersmith]

Lots of good suggestions, but my choice would be Rosa Rugosa. Fast growing, nice flowers and berries, and anyone trying to get through it would only do it once.

[ACE]

Sea Buckthorn, even animals will not push through it. Plus loads of things to do with the fruit.

[Digeroo]

Not heard of sea buckthorn.  Pics of it looks spectacular, seems it is a superfruit.

Seems it likes the sea side, might try it, but the tide went out here several million years ago.  But we have very well drained soil.  One problem is that you need a male and a female.   I might do better than the Goji!!!
Dioecious.  They are quite cheap to buy, but I cannot work out how to ensure you get both male and female plants. 

[bluecar]

Thanks all.

Rosa rugossa is sounding good as it is also fast growing.

As Digeroo, Sea Buckthorn seems great but would it work in the Midlands?

Bluecar

[laurieuk]

Why not try a mixed berberis hedge , you can get, deciduous, evergreen with flowers followed by berries etc. they all have thorns making them animal or human proof. just make sure you do not get pendulous varieties.

[John85]

The thorns of berberis are really vicious but the evergreens ones are rather slow growing.
Sea buckthorn would be hardy in the Midlands but be aware that it makes suckers.

[Russell]

Ever thought of that native British species, the Common Holly, Ilex Aquifolium? Granted it is not fast growing but with proper watering in June, it is not slow either.
You can propagate especially good specimens by layering, but if you need lots of plants it would be more economical to grow from holly berries gathered in the wild i.e, free of charge. However the holly berry technique is more for the impecunious than for the impatient.
Gather your berries in November before the birds eat them all.
Sow shallowly outdoors at Christmas in sand in deep shade and cover with net to keep the birds off.
About 15 months later in early spring, sieve the berries out of the sand and re-sow them in rows in good compost and full light. With a net of course. Water them.
Plant the babies out as they emerge at about 4 inch spacings and keep them very well watered, if you keep them wet they will keep growing but if once they get dry they stop growing for the rest of the year. Do not permit any weeds at all in the holly bed or the hollies will stop and maybe even die.
By next spring they will be ready to move on to eight inch spacings. Keep watering.
The following spring you should have an amazing variety of colours, habits of growth, vigour, leaf shapes etc and you can then select the plants to give you a proper healthy vigorous stockproof spiky holly hedge in which every plant is different and looks different.

[Obelixx]

I planted a rosa rugosa hedge when we started our Belgian garden en veggie plot and needed a windbreak and boundary marker.  It looked great for its first 2 or 3 years then started to look very tatty as it succumbed to gales and cold but also it suckered like mad.

I would suggest a vigorous rambling rose trained along the existing palisade - some repeat flower now but for viciousness and vigour, go for Kiftsgate (10m) then Wedding Day and Rambling Rector.

We pla,ted pyracantha on another boundary but it proved inconsiistent and we also planted variegated holly but the cows next door leant over the barbed wire and ate all the soft spring growth, thus giving us a short, fat hedge.  We ended up installing a barrier of rusty mesh as used by builders for concrete and that did the trick.   In fact, you could just attach that to the palisade making sure you leave sharp pointy bits at the top.  Not strong enough to support hoomans but inobtrusive and will last donkeys years and support plants like Kiftsgate or blackberries and so on.

[hartshay]

Sloe is brilliant ... spiky pretty dense and a great crop for toehold sloe gin in a few years.  My hedge  is also  interplanted with a bit of hawthorn(Haws for birds and can be layered) hazel( for bean poles) and wild roses (flowers and hips!) which makes it pretty impenetrable...