We have inherited a 25-foot tall English laurel hedge. The former owner never took care of of so most of the ‘inside’ is just dead branches, but the rest is VERY healthy. Our neighbors would like us to prune it so it’s not obstructing their view, and I’d like to reduce its size so I don’t need to climb a ladder to prune it in the future. Can I cut it back severely, and regrow it into a more manageable hedge? I don’t have the energy to remove it entirely.
I doubt that anyone would ever consider English laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) a manageable hedge plant since what it really wants is to be a tree, but since you want to keep it as a screen, you should be able to cut it back quite hard. It will most likely put on new growth. However, it will look fairly awful while you are waiting for this to happen. According to local Plant Amnesty pruning expert Cass Turnbull (in her Guide to Pruning, Sasquatch Books, 2006), “radical renovations of laurel hedges are common. In the spring, saw the overgrown hedge into the desired shape, except perhaps a foot or two smaller than the final desired size. That’s because it will need that room to resprout and be sheared into a thick green coat again. Be sure to cut your hedge narrow as well as short. It should be narrow enough for one gardener to reach across with a hedge shear. I have only seen one laurel hedge that didn’t recover from this radical treatment. (…) Please avoid heavy pruning on a hot July or August day, as you might burn up some internal leaves or scald the bark.”