Miniture hedging
By Drummond
Italy 
I live in Italy and have a south facing terraced 'edge' measuring 13 metres long and I would like to plant with something that will prevent people going off the edge of the terrace! A box hedge was considered but we feel that this is too boring. What shrubs could we plant that would be able to survive hot temperatures and cold in the winter and not get 'leggy' with age?
17 Sep, 2008
Answers
How about Rosemary.,
17 Sep, 2008
Shrubby potentillas. These lose their leaves in winter but form a dense network of little branches. Flowers come in yellow, orange, white, pink and red (although the latter will fade in the sun)
17 Sep, 2008
Cistus - they enjoy those conditions too. Convulvulus Cneorum might also be a possibility.
17 Sep, 2008
rosemary sounds good to me. maybe the trailing one. cotton lavender 'santolina' both do well in hot dry places.
17 Sep, 2008
Euonymus comes with pretty leaves. It has various habits so you would need to buy one that grows to the height and shape you want. It does well here in Hungary where we also have continental climate. I've also got Aucuba in my garden. The leaves do suffer with frost bite a bit but grow back well. There are many Thujas and other small conifers in nice colours too which are pretty resilient. I've found the gold Thuja Aurea nana weathers all temps. I had some dark dwarf conifers that gave up in the heat. Hope this helps. Welcome to GOY.
By the way if you want to see nice Box hedges look at the pics I just took on a trip to Holland. They go in for it in a big way there. Another thought, I have some Lavender hedges and they do very well.
17 Sep, 2008