Change
Until very recently my 1970s house, with its pebble-dashed exterior and white UPVC windows, came accessorised with another suburban cliché - the leylandii hedge. Leylandii (Cupressus × leylandii) is a fast growing conifer hybrid. It is almost always sterile and so all the plants we see in garden centres will have been propagated by cuttings. This is a plant that humans have encouraged into life, wanting a rapid thick hedge to protect from the prying eyes of the neighbours. The tallest example of this relatively young species is said to be a 40m (130ft) specimen at Bedgebury National Pinetum in Kent. However, its ability to quickly reach height is also one of the downsides, with leylandii hedges often cited in disputes, including gruesomely in 2003 becoming implicated in a murder, where a man allegedly shot his neighbour after an argument about a hedge. Boundaries are touchy subjects it seems. Around the same time as these sad happenings, we were house hunting. I remember viewing ...