Best way to remove a privot hedge

How tall is the hedge and how long/wide, etc. The best thing to do is cut it down and if you have a huge amount hire a garden shreader and compost the chippings or use them as mulch. If you have a small amount you could store it somewhere to dry off and burn it and then scatter the wood ash in your soil. You will need to dig out the roots. This will not be an easy job!!!

Please bear in mind that birds are nesting now.

Yes, I forgot to mention that about nesting birds. Leave it til August. Hopefully the soil will be dry and lifting the roots will be easier.

I dont know if you are in the UK? Is this a hedge between your garden and a neighbour? If so and it has been there for more than 12 years you need to consult them as to whether they are agreeable. I was in the position of the person on the other side and came home one day to find a large hole and the boundary stone ripped out! It was a long time before the fence was put up. Once it was all finished we had an extra metre of garden but the birds weren't pleased. Now I am trying to plant enough bushes, bamboos etc. to cover up the brown fence.

Hi Eddiemc we had the same problem when we moved into our present home a couple of years ago although we only wanted to remove 10ft or so for drive gates.

Anyhow the hedge is like yours very old and we were told by our new neighbours that it would be such a hard job and that we would need to hire some digging tools.

Needless to say we did it all by our own hands and although the roots are a little hard it helped that the soil was quite dry around the roots and they came up without too much trouble.

Chop the main brush down and then dig up the roots it's back breaking work but worth it in the end.Hel.xxx.

That's basically what we did when removing an Escallonia hedge - cut it right down to stumps, then dig each out - my husband had to use a pickaxe to get the bigger ones out. Then I dug and dug again and tipped barrow loads of compost on and dug it all in! P.S. I am pre-supposing that once your fence is in you will want to plant things next to it!

I must be missing something from your question, because it really seems straight forward, you cut away the top growth with the appropriate tools ie, chain saw, loppers, hand saw. Don't cut it right down to the base has it is always useful to have a piece of stem to get a good grip on when you are pulling at it. This job is going to involve a lot of digging and leverage. I don't think anyone is going to give you the easy magical answer you are looking for, (I'm not trying to be funny, sorry if it comes across that way) this is going to involve time and hard work unless of course you cheat and know a guy with a truck with a crane on the back of it, this can prove dangerous, however many landscapers have used this approach to reef shrubs, hedges and tree stumps out of the ground it saves a lot of time and hard work, however it is entirely at your own risk, you might end pulling something up along with it, that you really didn't want to.

I am amazed that everyone has ignored the legal situation!

How do you mean, Celandine? If it's on your property, you can remove hedges and put up a fence up to a certain height without any legal implications?

If the hedge is a shared one between you and a neighbour and has been there for more than 12 years, you are required by law to ask their agreement to remove it. Of couse, if there is no neighbour on the other side it doesn't matter

Hi Celandine, can you tell me which law is broken because yesterday a neighbour has removed a well established privot hedge without consulting us. It went along the back of our garden. When we approached him and asked him what he was doing he said he could no longer maintain the hedge and was removing it and putting in a fence. We don't know what sort of fence......when we expressed our disappointment that the hedge was being removed he said it was on his land and we can see the deeds of his property to prove it. What do you mean by shared.......if it is on his land does this not matter if it has been there more than twelve years? Any help would be useful. We are devastated from a security point of view and also from losing the beauty of the hedge.
Thanks

Look the hedge is gone, no amount of complaing or negative feelings are going to bring it back. You're going to get a free fence, why not grow something up it, or plant your own hedge against it.

Any complaining at this stage would just be spiteful and vengeful, further more it would achieve absoulutly nothing except some temporary satisfaction for your ego.

I can see by your reply that you are probably the same sort of neighbour as the one who has just removed the hedge....someone without any thought about how your actions affects others. This family did this without any thought of how it may have impeded on others, call me old fashioned if you like, but I was brought up to consider others and a discussion with us may have brought about a compromise.........they have drawn the line in the sand all we are trying to do is establish any lawful recourse we have my friend.
Thanks for your reply.

Sorry about the hedge, Canal. If Celandine is correct about the 12yr rule, then your only redress would be through the small claims court. However, in the small claims court, you would have to pay your own expenses whether you won or not. You have to ask yourself therefore whether it is really worth the trouble, expense and making a proper enemy out of your neighbour. Some law firms offer a free half hour initial consultation in which a solicitor can at the very least tell you whether you've got a case or not. Hope this helps.

Hi Canal, Unfortunately I can't quote the exact details but I read the info in a garden magazine a couple of years back. the reason it stuck in my mind is that the same thing happened to us! We were separated from our neighbours by a 40 year old privet hedge planted when the houses were built. Our deeds state that the boundaries are held in common.One day we came home to discover that half the hedge had gone including the boundary stone placed there by the builders. When we asked the neighbour what was going on and I quoted the 12 year rule I had just read about, he was extremely rude and said its coming down. Eventually it was all removed and replaced by a very tatty brown fence which fell down in a gale and we had to prop it up.Apart from the birds who nested there losing out, we gained about a metre or so of garden and I am still planting things to cover up the nasty fence.

My god - he only asked how to remove a hedge not ur individual opinions or life stories!!

I am now in the process of removing over 130 foot of hedge and have tried a few different methods including a turfer. By far the quickest way was to remove the major foliage with a chainsaw then with a four footed wooden A frame standing about 7 foot high with a 1 ton Hand chain block. Wrap the chain around the lowest part of the stump and pull. Make sure the branches don't get caught on the frame or you'll be pulling against yourself. Once totally free knock the soil from the roots, slacken chain, job done. I know it sounds like a faff having to make things before you get started but before the frame and hand block we managed about 3 roots aday with a turfer, today with a frame we managed 14 I think. But that was a leisurely pace with plenty of fags and cups of tea. I have a few more to do tomorrow so I might make a video of it.

Oh by the way it does leave a massive hole in the ground.