Laurel Hedges

In the back yard I had a HUGE Laurel Hedge. It was a pain to trim and had been growing since the mid 40's. There are photos of my Aunt in the back yard with a nice small hedge behind her in the photos. My husband had built a platform for our bed in the summer of 2007, it was nested into the laurel hedges. The treehouse made it difficult to trim the laurel. We trimmed it about 8 years ago but otherwise it has grown wild and HUGE over the last several years. Well last fall I made the decision to get it trimmed. We had a very difficult time trying to find anyone that would trim the laurels (they were over 40 ft tall). A lot of people would trim the walnut tree but would not touch the laurel. When we did find someone to do all the work they came and topped the hedges. They looked terrible but I knew they would grow back...laurel always grows back. 

As I stated before the laurel was quite large and when the tree person topped the hedge he left all the branches that were sticking out the towards the neighbors house intact. Only problem was they were laying on the neighbors garage. I knew we would have to do something soon the laurel was rubbing his roof and causing leaks. 
That brings us to a couple weeks ago. We had a nasty wind storm and my neighbor lost some branches from his tree onto his garage. He got up on the garage and saw how much of our laurel was on his roof and cut back all the branches that were laying on his garage. Now the hedges looked like a sick tree with a couple of green leaves left for color. It would take another year for the hedges to come back. 

I had wanted to get rid of the laurel for a long time so that is what we did. We cut one of the large tree size laurels down to the ground and replaced it with containers of bamboo. It took about 3 days for us to cut down the large laurel, our friend brought over his chain saw and even he had problems cutting into the base of the laurel. The stump was about 3 ft around. and very heavy. Several of the branches had grown into each other to make one large base for the laurel. This stump took 3 people to move it from the back yard to the side yard to be hauled away. 

Nancy wants to know where the laurel hedge went, she loves sitting in the bush watching squirrels and birds. I know it was a hunting ground for her...but it's gone. We did not grind the stump and that may come back to haunt us, but for now it's covered with landscape barrier cloth and 3 inches of crushed rock...on top of that is a 6ft long container full of rock, soil and bamboo. 

As you can see in some of the previous photos the neighbors garage was kind of ugly. Since we are outside a lot during the warmer weather we wanted to look at something nice. My husband talked to the neighbor and he agreed to let us nail cedar boards to the side. We had a canvas that was given to me by a friend and we put that up too. We are going to paint a raccoon on the white boarded up window. 

The bamboo was installed last week, on a beautiful 70 degree day. It took 3 men about 3 hours to install bamboo. We had Golden Vivax Bamboo installed in 3 container that are 6ft long. The bamboo was already about 12 ft high so we started with a nice tall background that is pleasing to the eye. You can see the cedar fencing and the painting is a nice color spot through the bamboo. Another bonus is the sound of the bamboo in the wind...a nice rustling sound.