Baytree Garden Centre's column explores the benefit of planting a hedge

The latest Baytree Garden Centre column looks at the virtues of planting a hedge.

Bonfire night went with a bang. My £18.99 box of fireworks provided seconds of entertainment, but what an amazing few seconds they were.

The present Mrs Cox’s bangers were a bit of a disappointment, my fizzing roman candle barely fizzed and the super duper rocket finale exploded with such force it broke two panes of glass in my newly-cleaned greenhouse.

Once my number one daughter had stopped laughing, we moved onto my favourite Bonfire Night pastime, writing words in the air with our sparklers. “Bang” was the longest distinguishable word we were able to create out of our sparkler art.

It was not a huge amount of money to spend on fireworks and, to be fair, I knew they wouldn’t be very good. But when you light the touch paper you are hoping for a New Year’s Eve style celebration as seen in the capital but, alas, the dream never lives up to reality.

However this week I think that I have found the exception which proves the rule. I’d received a text message from Monty, one of my golf pals, that this morning he awoke to find a significant hole at the bottom of the garden where a fence once stood. Monty was understandably shocked at the new hole but was more shocked at current timber prices. Replacing the missing panels, posts etc like for like would simply be out of his budget.

Now this is where a natural hedge can save you hundreds of pounds over buying and erecting a new fence. Okay it might take a few years before the hedge reaches the height of the original fence - but you can be pretty sure it’s not going to blow over if cared for properly. When I say cared for I just mean trimmed regularly.

The ground is still warm and whatever you plant now will put good roots out before the onset of the colder winter months. Best of all bare root hedging is much cheaper than buying established hedging plants in a pot.

After meeting Monty that afternoon we agreed that the remainder of his fence would not last much longer and it would be best to completely remove the fence which would leave him with around a 30ft gap at the bottom of his garden.

I calculated that 20 Leylandii whips or bare root plants would fill that gap when planted about 18 inches apart. Leylandii can put on near 45cm of new growth each year so his 2ft plants would not remain 2ft for long. Before we began digging the holes we filled a bucket with water and placed the bare root hedging plants into the water. This would ensure that the roots were nicely damped.

Together we set about digging 20 holes at a depth of 12 inches for each plant and into the soil we mixed some mycorrhizal fungi, this fungus is particularly beneficial to bare-root plants, finally we sprinkled a little over the wet roots as this will turbo charge new root development.

So, for a relatively small outlay Monty, is now the proud owner of a 30ft wide Leylandii hedge at the bottom of his garden.

Okay it’s not going to break any records at the moment, but give it time and his small investment is going to pay dividends.

There are still a few things out that don’t cost the earth that will eventually exceed your expectations.