Ligustrum Ovaliflium, or commonly known as California Privet is a leggy shrub with shiny, semi-green, flipped leaves and white flowers that typically bloom in the June and July to attract butterflies. It originated from Japan and South Korea. They are fast growing and flowering shrubs that branched from the olive tree family. Setting up a mini garden or park at home has been a huge trend recently, and California Privet plays a prominent part in the decorative aspects as well as landscape screening. Who doesn’t have landscapes or areas in their porch or backyard that needs to be screened or hide? Apart from the all high-end options, a budget-friendly alternative is to grow a living plant to form a hedge. Growing California privet in the form of the hedge will give a beautiful and lively appearance to your home in comparison to a wooden fence. Forming privet hedges isn’t hard as you think since they grow very fast and all they need is a bit of care.
Before anything else, choosing the right privet is vital. It depends on how big and tall you want your hedges to grow. California hedges typically grow for about 10 to 15 feet high and wide. These plants love full exposure to sun, great soil that is well drained and you always need to make sure the moisture level is consistent for better growth. Always make sure that the hedges aren’t covered by anything that blocks the direct sunlight since it may lead the leaves to fall off. Next, a fertile sandy loam soil is the most excellent choice for the optimum growth of your hedges.
Most importantly, providing adequate moisture is crucial than anything else. Hence, regular watering is a must to keep the soil evenly moisturized until your privets grow to optimum height. Once established, you only need to water them once a week with one inch of water. A perfect way to water your well-grown and thick hedges effortlessly is to use a garden water hose reel. It is a long hose that permits you to walk around and water your privet hedges in no time.They should be planted in separate pots in a row at about three feet apart from one another. Over time they begin to merge together as well as grow higher and hide the area that you want to screen. The more you prune these privet hedges, the thicker they get. Hence, it is vital to prune hedges twice a year. It can be done more frequently, but at the initial stage, we need to allow space and time for them to grow in the direction we want. On top of that, you need to prune the privet hedges making it slightly thinner at the top and broader at the bottom. You never want the hedge to grow too wide at the top and stay narrow at the bottom because then the sun is shaded from the bottom and you might end up losing leaves along the base of the hedge.
In short, the exciting fact is from tiny California Privet; big hedges can grow and solve many problems. So if you are in the midst of finding a solution to screen a landscape at your backyard or to create a green garden look that makes your home lively, California Privet is all you need.
