California Privet Hedge

Need a hedge with personality? This semi-evergreen shrub is a great choice for gardeners looking for a dense, reliable, and ever-interesting hedge! The California Privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium) is a hardy shrub that creates a striking and stately living wall or fence that will flourish with blooms and berries while needing very little upkeep!

Also referred to as the Oval Leaf Privet, this shrub has medium green foliage with an attractive, even, and understated leaf shape. These leaves have a mellow and cheerful yellow underside. This happy shrub will produce prolific clusters of highly scented white flowers in the summertime. These peppy little blooms will please your local butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees!

The California Privet grows in an upright shape with branching that reaches toward the sky, but its 10-15 foot tall and wide form can be trimmed and trained into any shape or size you need to express your individual style, allowing you a world of options to create a personalized landscape!

These shrubs can remain evergreen in the warmest climates giving you year-round greenery! Their dense branching looks fantastic even in the coldest climates of USDA plantings zones 4 to 8! Members of the Olive family, unpruned or sheared shrubs can develop small dark purple drupes that songbirds gobble up!

Planting and Application:

This versatile shrub takes pruning like no other! If you find trimming and shaping hedging rewarding and meditative, then this should already be in your cart!

The California Privet makes for a refined hedge both as a naturally fluffy or sharply sheared form! It has been used in the Hamptons and other coastal areas as a privacy screen for decades! It holds up well to wind, salt, and full-to-partial sun!

The California Privet grows rapidly and can be used on a small or large scale! Its tolerance to pruning to size and shape allows you to mold your shrub to exactly what you need! Unleash the sculptor within you!

Create a unique front landscape with a low-trimmed and clipped hedge to screen your front yard from the street and sidewalk. Add a matching pair of topiary shrubs astride your driveway to feel like you are entering a grand estate. Create taller matching taller topiary shrubs at the corners of your hedge with a matching one plated at the entrance of your home to soften the corner.

Then add low-trimmed Privet shrubs beneath your front windows with a unique tree-form Privet at each corner to soften the edges of your home. Simply remove lower branches and reveal the multi-branched lower third to lower half of its trunks! Then include a sheared topiary in the front yard berm to tie it all together!

This plant loves to be manicured into a dense and formal hedge which can be kept from a 2-foot plant to a 15-foot plant! Privet is urban environment and pollution-tolerant, so they won't mind being planted in the front yard!

From property definition by growing into living fences for privacy and screening, to enveloping your yard into private outdoor garden rooms, you'll wrap yourself in fast-growing seclusion that slows the wind, blocks noise, and keeps prying eyes at bay!

Use around your outdoor dining and seating areas, around the pool and sunbathing areas, and create a private jacuzzi nook that has green walls and a starry sky! Need some peace and relaxation? Create your own evening tea or morning coffee spot with a bistro table and chairs, or yoga and meditation area to whisk away the hectic world.

While the California Privet is mostly renowned for its ability to form a dense hedge that will soar above your head, it also can be clipped and used in cut flower arrangements such as lush greenery and garland. In addition to the flowers bringing in pollinators, the dense branching and fruit make Privet a fantastic wildlife and songbird shelter and nesting spot!

• Small Green Ovular Leaves & Yellow Undersides
• White Fragrant Flower Sprays in Spring
• Vigorous Grower Semi-Evergreen or Deciduous
• Large Shrub or Small Tree
• Excellent Privacy Hedge, Outdoor Garden Rooms & Landscape Definition

#ProPlantTips for Care:

This easy-care shrub grows under almost any conditions! Even if you're in an urban environment, this plant can handle it. Deciduous and semi-evergreen Privet will thrive in full sun for the best growth. Fast-growing and long-lived, these shrubs need well-drained soil, and regular watering to stay healthy and stress-free. Save yourself some work and install drip irrigation or a soaker hose for larger installations. This keeps the leaves dry of excess water and keeps them cleaner.

Privet can handle some drought and dry soil once it is established, so get your new installations established successfully, plant with Nature Hills Root Booster for lifelong symbiotic support, and regular moisture access during that first year. A spring application of fertilizer keeps your shrubs growing green! Provide a 3-4 inch deep top-dressing of arborist mulch to hold moisture, insulate the roots, reduce weed competition, and add a finishing touch to your garden design!

Tips and Tricks for Pruning a Privet Hedge

When used as a formal hedge, these carefree, fast, and easy-to-grow plants will need pruning to keep them shaped up, neat and tidy.

Major pruning or renewal pruning is probably best done in early spring just before the plants begin to leaf out. Keep it compact by reducing the new growth back to older growth.

Use a string line a bit taller than your desired height or width to keep your lines perfectly straight. Electric or gas-powered trimmers can be used to speed up the job. After you are done trimming, run a large plastic rake across the sides and top of the hedge to check your work for any stray branches.

For all hedges, it is always best to keep the lowest part of the hedge the widest and the top of the hedge the narrowest. This method of pruning will ensure nice density right to the ground.

Quick and simple "haircuts" will tidy up the look of your hedge easily. Do this task using handheld hedge shears on overcast days throughout the summer, when needed. You won't need to take much off, just a light trim.

Privet also responds beautifully to renewal pruning. Simply cut the oldest, thickest branches out right to the ground to open up the center of the shrub to more light and air circulation. You can even plan to periodically reduce your shrub right down to the ground leaving no branches above the soil. In a very short period of time, you'll see new shoots quickly develop from the roots and make a whole new plant for you.

• Widely Adaptable Full Sun
• Any Well-Drained Soil
• Moderate Consistent Moisture For Best Results
• Prune After Flowering & Tolerates Shearing
• Deer Resistant, Urban Tolerant & Easy To Grow!

Don't wait to order your California Privet. This versatile and popular shrub sells out fast. We're pleased to offer it while supplies last, but we anticipate this stately shrub to fly off the shelves! Order enough for your next landscaping project at NatureHills.com and get your next hedge delivered to your doorstep!

Sometimes a plant can do a little 'too well' in some areas. Nature Hills employs Plant Sentry™ to protect ecosystems and native habitats by following all state and federal regulations that stop the shipment of potentially invasive plants into sensitive areas.