Evergreen hedge plants are a handy privacy screen – find out more about the most important types.
05.03.2025
Yew and thuja are among the densely growing evergreen hedges that are well suited as privacy screens.
The garden bamboo Fargesia and the red tip Photinia are evergreen hedges that are not toxic.
Privet, thuja and cherry laurel are among the fast-growing evergreen hedge plants.
The special feature of evergreen hedges is that they are green all year round, forming a handy privacy screen and providing shade. In addition, many evergreen hedges are a welcome shelter for garden animals such as birds or hedgehogs. There are also flowering evergreen hedges that are particularly insect-friendly, such as holly and privet.
Semi-evergreen and winter-green hedge types, which can also have bare phases, are to be distinguished from evergreen hedges.
It’s worth knowing some of the most popular evergreen hedge plants with their special characteristics. The following brief profiles are intended to help you find the right hedge type for your garden.
The yew is a hardy, evergreen hedge plant that is particularly easy to cultivate. Yew hedges are both dense and easy to maintain. They should be cut twice a year between February and September. For humans and pets such as dogs or cats, yew is toxic due to the seeds in the red yew berry, while birds eat the berries freely. Yew hedges also provide them with valuable nesting places.
| Growth rate | 20 to 30 centimetres per year |
| Required maintenance | low |
| Space requirement/width | 70 to 800 centimetres |
With its glossy green leaves and red shoots, the hardy Photinia Red Robin is one of perhaps the most magnificent, modern evergreen hedges. Photinia has white flowers from May to June and later red fruits that serve as feeding sources for birds. This is an evergreen hedge that takes well to pruning and is best pruned in March before the new shoots come out.
| Growth rate | 20 to 40 centimetres per year |
| Required maintenance | rather low, but sufficient watering |
| Space requirement/width | 120 to 200 centimetres |
Cherry laurel comes from the family of rose plants and is a flowering evergreen hedge. From May to June, it has white flowers and, in late summer, black fruits that contain poison. Cherry laurel is largely uninteresting for indigenous insects due to its toxicity. It is takes to pruning very well and is ideally shaped at the end of June every year around St. John’s Day.
| Growth rate | 20 to 40 centimetres per year |
| Required maintenance | low |
| Space requirement/width | 80 to 120 centimetres |
Thuja is one of the real classics among hardy, evergreen, fast-growing hedge plants. It is dense and therefore suitable as a privacy screen. The best time to prune thujais at the end of June around St. John’s Day, and, in the case of two prunes per year, at the end of August.
Caution: Thuja is toxic to humans and to pets such as dogs and cats. An evergreen thuja hedge does not provide any food for insects and birds.
| Growth rate | 20 to 40 centimetres per year |
| Required maintenance | low |
| Space requirement/width | 70 to 150 centimetres |
The Atrovirens privet is a hardy, semi-evergreen, fast-growing hedge plant that is easy to maintain and grows in many types of soil. Due to its dense branches, the Atrovirens privet is well suited as a privacy screen – with one limitation: at the end of winter, the black-green privet loses its leaves in order to shoot vigorously again in spring.
The end of June is the best time to prune a privet hedge, and the end of August is the best time for further pruning. The flowering privet hedges are butterfly and bee-friendly and offer small animals shelter.
| Growth rate | 20 to 25 centimetres per year |
| Required maintenance | easy-care |
| Space requirement/width | 300 to 400 centimetres |
The evergreen mock cypress hedge needs a sunny location to grow and form a decorative, dense privacy screen. You can trim mock cypress hedges either twice a year in spring and autumn or once a year around St. John’s Day at the end of June. They are toxic and the plant’s essential oils have an irritating effect. As an evergreen hedge, the mock cypress is therefore not really suitable for households with children or pets.
| Growth rate | up to 30 centimetres per year |
| Required maintenance | Regular maintenance required |
| Space requirement/width | 100 to 175 centimetres |
Holly takes well to pruning and is an evergreen hedge plant that can grow densely. With its dark green, spiky leaves and bright red fruits, it is a decorative eye-catcher in semi-shaded to shady locations.
The leaves and fruit of the holly are not very toxic to humans, but are a popular source of food for birds. The holly with its white flowers is also a bee-friendly evergreen hedge.
| Growth rate | 20 to 40 centimetres per year |
| Required maintenance | easy-care |
| Space requirement/width | 60 to 300 centimetres |
Correct hedge maintenance is essential to ensure that you can enjoy a healthy, evergreen garden hedge for a long time to come. Once you’ve decided to plant a hedge, regular work at which you can excel awaits you.
Evergreen hedges are best planted in April, just before they sprout or at the end of August, when there are no more new shoots. This means that young hedge plants can take root well before winter.
STIHL tip: Planting your evergreen hedge plants in a planter offers great flexibiity in terms of time.
The following video shows you how to plant a hedge in your garden.
To keep your evergreen garden hedge in shape, it should be pruned regularly. For many hedge types, a good time to prune evergreen hedgesis at the end of June, around St. John’s Day. You can also trim your evergreen hedge at the end of August to achieve a particularly accurate pruning pattern.
Please note the months in which you are allowed to prune hedges. In order to protect the nesting and breeding season of birds, pruning hedges is prohibited from 1 March up to and including 30 September. Hedges may not be pruned severely or cut back to the trunk during this period. If there are no birds nesting in your hedge, light shaping and maintenance trimming of your evergreen hedge are still permitted.
Trimming your evergreen hedge requires the right tools and equipment. With the powerful, precise STIHL hedge trimmers and long-reach hedge trimmers, you are ideally equipped for hedge trimming. While the easy-to-handle hedge trimmers are more suitable for hedges that are at chest and hip height, a long-reach hedge trimmer can also be used to reach all areas of particularly tall hedges.
To prevent hedge diseases, it is important that you fertilise your evergreen hedges regularly. The best time to provide evergreen hedges with nutrients such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) is the growing period in Spring.
Beware of poisonous hedges
Some shrubs and hedges are poisonous. The yew is not suitable for households that include children or pets, because the seeds in its bright red berries are particularly poisonous. You should only touch freshly cut thuja, cherry laurel and cypress stems when wearing gloves. Some caution is also required when trimming privet and boxwood. Always make sure you wear the right protective clothing when pruning and maintaining your hedge.
