What hedge to plant? Sixty feet of hedge in Zone 11b

[Niele da Kine]

The excavator has come and is done with this area now so we can clean it up, fence it and then plant a hedge, but what hedge to plant?

We're in zone 11B with somewhere around 8 to 10 feet of rain each year. There's deep soil, somewhat on the acidic side and lots of sunshine. There's also a workshop about twenty feet from where the hedge will be. It will be hedge, sloped area (maybe a garden of some sort?) then a possibly grassy driveway area then the workshop. So it will be nice to have some sort of visual block from where the houses will be built into the work shop.

I don't want a hedge that grows really fast because it takes too much maintenance once it's established. It would be nice if there were some sort of fruit or something from the hedge. I was thinking coffee, but coffee plants are kinda spindly and can be looked through. Currently, the lot on the other side of the soon to be installed field fence is a macadamia nut orchard, although I've heard that at some point it's going to be subdivided and a half dozen houses will be there. It would be nice to have the hedge there for when that happens.

Maybe a tea hedge? Camellia sinensus, we'd get tea to drink from it. Usually it's kept lower for ease of harvest, but I could let it grow taller to be a visual barrier for when there's houses there.

Night blooming jasmine may be an option. Nothing to eat, but it smells nice. It's also a nice vertical hedge although it does kinda grow fast and may be a maintenance nightmare after awhile.

Russian Olive doesn't have anything to eat on it and grows too fast.

Oleander is poisonous to critters, don't want that since we have sheep and bunnies.

Can mulberry be made into a dense enough hedge? That turns into a tree, although maybe not that big of one? It's good bunny and sheep feed.

Ti plants (cordyline terminalis) are a nice vertical hedge, but they are usually pretty spindly and not very dense. They do grow well, though, and are good bunny food. Sheep like them, too.

Bay laurel? I use a few leaves now and then when making soup, maybe a whole hedge would be a bit too much.

There's already a lot of bananas along the other side and they do grow fast. Kinda messy and hard to remove once the mat of bananas starts expanding.

Bamboo is out, it's impossible to keep from spreading - even the clumping types, and impossible to remove if not wanted anymore.

What would you plant?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Heck, I don't know.. Maybe look around you to find one you like. 60' is a lot of hedge to trim and remove the debris after trimming.

The Illinois Everbearing Mulberry I grew would not do. It quickly grew into a tree.

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

We planted mulberries last week in a row with the idea is making a hedge. Our dwarf mulberries are more bushy so they might work.

 

[Artichoke Lover]

Dwarf mulberries maybe. The normal ones no. Some varieties of those can reach 80ft very quickly.
I know some varieties of native plum make good hedges though I doubt you would get enough chill hours where you are.

 

[Niele da Kine]

80 feet is a pretty tall hedge! We may want to put solar panels on the workshop roof at some point, so keeping it below twelve feet would be better.

We have some sort of mulberry which is about three years old now and about twenty feet. It has tasty berries on it, but it's not thick like a hedge should be so if I were to use a different type of mulberry it would require finding them somewhere.

I could plant beans or passion fruit on the fence and let them cover the fence. It'd be a lot of beans and unless they were lima beans they'd have to be replanted all the time. Hmm, passion fruit even grows quickly although we don't really eat much passion fruit, it's mostly made into juice. Grapes would grow but there's some sort of bug that eats the leaves into skeletons.

Maybe a climbing rose bush? It would have to be a thornless variety, though. And a scented one, a rose without an aroma is just improper.

 

[Niele da Kine]

Hmm, just tried looking around for dwarf mulberry and where I generally get trees is Bay Laurel Nursery, they're not taking any more orders until next September. Stark Bros., is out of dwarf mulberry. I doubt it would be available anywhere locally unless it were cuttings from someone who had some.

And apparently, Stark Bros won't ship to Hawaii since it got flagged 'prohibited' across all the pictures of the various mulberries when I put in my zipcode.

 

[ninnymary]

The only advise I can give you is to drive around and see what other people have that you may like. Also talk to someone at the nursery.

I woman I know has a dwarf mulberry and the berries were sweet and delicious. Been thinking of getting one but I absolutely have no room in this tiny city lot.

Good luck finding what you want and need.

Mary

 

[Niele da Kine]

Sourceing anything is gonna be problematical, I think. Until we get the big plant shows back, about all I have available is the pitiful offerings of the big box shops in Kona or Hilo. Usually in the spring and fall, there's a big plant show in Hilo that has everything that isn't usually available in places other than the big plant sales.

Finding things online seems harder than usual since everything is either sold out or the website isn't even taking more orders. I've been looking for the Zephirine Douhin rose for the past year or so and it isn't available anywhere near me that I know of. Although everything 'near me' is on an island without a lot of population so there's not a lot of choices in most everything. Anyway, I'd hoped to cover a pavilion that isn't built yet with the rose, it would also be a good fence cover. Hmm, considering it's a fence, a thorny rose may be a better security system than a thornless rose. I may order one from Bay Laurel nurseries since they will ship to Hawaii, although that won't happen until September and they wouldn't ship the rose until next January.

So, even though it was another rainy day, I did get half the fencing put in. Since I think it's gonna be awhile before being able to find a hedge for it, I'm planting pole beans there to grow on the fence. I may run a couple of lines above the fence for the vines to grow on or perhaps some small trellises since the vines will be taller than the fence. That will put the whole back fence issue into a holding pattern until whatever the hedge will be shows up. The beans will also add nitrogen to the soil, so that will be good, too. Plus, they're Good Mother Stallard beans, they're a really tasty soup bean and there's never enough soup beans around here.

 

[ninnymary]

Are there restrictions in shipping from California to Hawaii? If not, I could order one for you and ship it to you. Have no idea what the cost would be though. I'm getting my David Austin roses this Thursday so they are shipping to my zone.

Mary

 

[ducks4you]

Grapes. You need to prune them, but you can shape them in any way that you wish. It will take a little bit longer for them to get big, but you can plant fast growing flowers there until they do.
IF you plant something that grows fast, you have NO winter to check the growth, and you will have out of control plants, like Tree of Paradise, which grows 5 ft/year in zone 5.
Other fruits like berries are nice, too. Be sure to buy thornless.