Hawthorn is one of the pome fruit plants that is characterized by the fact that it is particularly resistant to cutting, robust and regenerates quickly after cutting. Hawthorn grows as a small tree, as a shrub or as a free-growing hedge.
How do I trim a hawthorn hedge correctly?
When cutting a hawthorn hedge, the topiary cut should be trapezoidal in summer. Winter pruning is permitted until the end of February, with a maximum of a third of the hedge being shortened in the old wood. Use sharp tools and treat larger cut areas with wound closure material.
Hawthorn is one of the fast-growing trees that you can shorten to a height of around 15 centimeters when planting. While you can only make topiary cuts in the summer months, you can use the winter months to prune the hawthorn hedge more intensively.
The topiary of a hawthorn hedge
The topiary is the so-called summer cut, with which you give the hawthorn hedge the desired shape in the early summer months. Out of consideration for the local wildlife, radical cutting is not permitted between March 1st and September 30th. Birds in particular prefer the hawthorn hedge as a nesting place, as the thorny branches protect the offspring from predators.
The topiary is carried out in a trapezoidal shape. This means that the hedge becomes narrower towards the top. In this way, your hedge remains permanently dense and, above all, he althy. If you cut the hawthorn hedge straight towards the top, the lower area will become bare and lose density due to a lack of light. Basically, the shape cut is only carried out in new wood. The ideal time is late afternoon, when summer temperatures begin to cool down. In this way you ensure that the interfaces do not dry out too quickly and that the plant sap from the cut branches can retreat into the trunk.
If necessary: winter pruning of the hawthorn hedge
Before more intensive winter pruning, please remember that the usually lush white flowers of the hawthorn grow exclusively on perennial wood. However, if you would like to give your hawthorn hedge more growth and density, you can cut it back to the old wood during the winter rest phase, which is a maximum of a third of the hedge based on the total height. When winter pruning, which should be completed by the end of February at the latest, pay attention to the outside temperatures, with a frost-free day being ideal.
When cutting the hawthorn hedge, use sharp garden tools (14.00€ on Amazon) to achieve clean cuts that allow the plant to regenerate quickly. If the cut area is larger, you should treat the cut area with a suitable wound closure agent. The reason is that every cut is symbolically an open wound through which germs and fungal spores can penetrate the plant.
