How wide does a laurel hedge grow?

Laurel is a beautiful hedge plant. Laurel is evergreen and has lovely fresh-green to dark-green foliage. It’s a fast grower. Incidentally, we’re not actually talking about true laurel or culinary laurel, but about cherry laurel (sometimes also called paper laurel). Its Latin name is Prunus laurocerasus. This beautiful hedge plant is hardy, evergreen, and has lovely large, sturdy, glossy leaves. As far as we’re concerned, it’s the perfect plant for a beautiful hedge!

However, cherry laurel does have one drawback: the hedge can grow quite wide. In a small garden, that’s not always desirable. That said, you can keep a cherry laurel hedge a bit smaller or narrower by pruning it regularly.

How wide does a laurel hedge grow?

If left unpruned, a cherry laurel hedge will quickly grow to about one meter wide. A taller or older cherry laurel hedge can even reach up to two meters wide!

If you prune it thoroughly twice a year, you can keep a Prunus laurocerasus hedge to about one meter wide. With an extra pruning, you might be able to keep it to about 80 cm. It probably won’t be possible to keep it much narrower than that: it’s a fast grower, and the branches also become woody fairly quickly and get quite thick.

Which varieties of cherry laurel stay compact?

There are many different cultivars of cherry laurel. The well-known Prunus laurocerasus ‘Rotundifolia’ and ‘Novita’ tend to grow (too) wide quite quickly. Choose narrower cherry laurel varieties such as Prunus laurocerasus ‘Caucasica,’ ‘Elly,’ and ‘Genolia’ if you want a narrower cherry laurel hedge that fits better in a small garden.

You might also consider a completely different type of laurel: the Portuguese laurel (Prunus lusitanica). The cultivar with narrow leaves (Prunus lusitanica ‘Angustifolia’) is best suited for a narrow hedge.

You can read more about compact or slow-growing cultivars of bay laurel in our previous garden blog: Which bay laurel stays compact?

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