In article ,
David Hill wrote:
On 29/01/2014 10:46, Martin wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jan 2014 10:02:55 +0000, stuart noble
wrote:

Anyone got any suggestions?

http://i59.tinypic.com/vdegpw.jpg

The hedge had been allowed to get out of hand for a few years by the
previous owners, so we have reduced height by a foot, and are wondering
whether to thin it out a little in the Spring. Maybe those bare stalks
will sprout leaves if the top is kept trimmed?
Any advice appreciated

You can't post .jpg files to this group, urg is a plain text only group.

The problem is that it uses one of the damn-fool mechanisms to enable
some software to display the contents automatically. There are several
of them, they work only with their favoured software, and make things
harder for everyone else.

No problems with your link, and as to the hedge, privet will take as
much hacking about as you want to give it.
Even if you cut it to within a few inches of the ground it will grow
back, they should sprout from the bare stems with no problems.

More so! It should be cut back quite a long way beyond where you
want the final hedge boundary to be, as it tends to sprout from the
cut tips and not from the length of the bare stems. In extremis,
cutting it back to a few inches (as you say) will help - if doing
that, it is worth cutting its new shoots every 6-12" to encourage it
to bush out.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.