would like to cut down a holly tree that has grown adjacent to neighbour’s leylandi (sp?) hedge – the hedge behind the holly is just brown twiggy bits with no leaves – if i cut the holly down will the leylandi grow back green?

[doubleintendre]i want to trim a bush in the garden![/doubleintendre]
yes i suppose i could have used that title

I think the answer is No
– although I’m not a gardener so I could well be wrong but I’d heard with leylandii when you cut back into the brown <phnarrr> it doesn’t re-grow.

Brown bits on them at my flat dont seem to re-grow.

Conifers won’t grow back green once you’ve cut them, trim from the top down, or cut the whole thing down

Leaves only grow on the outside so anything inside the bush will be brown and probably won’t start growing until next year. I trimmed a leylandii right back and it took ages for it to re-grow green.

And be careful not to disturb any blackbirds’ nests.

Leylandii generally don’t have dormant buds in the old wood, so the answer is no, it won’t regrow. That’s why it’s a nightmare of a hedge plant – fine if you keep it trimmed but once it’s got too big there’s no easy way to reduce it. Some other conifers (notably Yew) do have dormant buds so are much easier to look after.

No – remove spawn of Satan hedging would be the answer.

Coniferous trees = unlikely to re-grow
Deciduous trees = expect coppice shoots

Ah, yes It was one of my Yew trees that I did that to. I got a right bollocking as well. It recovered well though.