Last updated August 2026
The hedge decision people make backwards
Most hedges get chosen by appearance and then live or die by everything else. The plant that looked right at the garden centre turns out to want more sun than the fence line gets, or hates the clay, or grows twice as fast as anyone wanted and becomes a fortnightly chore.
★View the Best Plant Nurseries in Auckland→A hedge is a long commitment. You are choosing something you will be looking at and trimming for a decade or more, so it is worth spending an hour on the decision. Here is the order to think about it in.
First: what is the hedge actually for?
The four common jobs want different plants.
Privacy or screening. You need density and height, and you need it to hold density at the bottom. Some plants go bare at the base as they mature, which is a real problem if the point was to stop people seeing in.
Shelter from wind. A different requirement: you want something that filters wind rather than blocking it, and that will tolerate being battered. Solid walls of planting create turbulence on the lee side.
Definition and structure. A low formal hedge edging a bed or a path. Small-leaved, tight-growing, and trimmed hard.
Boundary between neighbours. All of the above plus a conversation, because it is going to affect their light too.
Write down which of these it is before you look at a single plant.
Second: what are you actually planting into?
Auckland is not one growing environment and the differences matter.
Clay soil is the region’s defining feature across large parts of the isthmus and south. It holds water in winter and sets hard in summer, and plants that want free drainage will sulk or die in it. Improving the whole planting trench rather than digging an individual hole for each plant makes a substantial difference, a hole dug in clay and backfilled with good soil becomes a bucket that fills with water.
Humidity is the other one. Auckland’s warm, damp summers push fungal problems that would not appear further south, and some popular hedging plants are notably prone to them.
Wind and salt on the west and the harbour edges narrows the list considerably.
Aspect. A south-facing fence line in shade for most of the day will not support a plant that needs full sun, no matter how good it looks in the catalogue.
What tends to work in Auckland
Broad guidance rather than a shopping list, because the right answer depends on the four factors above:
- Native options (griselinia, corokia, pittosporum and similar) are generally the safest starting point. They evolved here, handle the humidity, and several are genuinely tough about wind and coastal conditions. Griselinia in particular is an Auckland workhorse for screening.
- Formal low hedging traditionally means buxus, and buxus blight is a real and widespread problem in humid conditions. Plenty of people still use it successfully, but it is worth knowing about the risk and asking about alternatives before committing to a hundred plants.
- Camellia makes an excellent tall dense hedge and flowers, which most hedging does not.
- Deciduous options such as hornbeam give a formal clipped hedge that loses its leaves in winter, worth considering where winter light matters.
- Edible hedges (feijoa is the obvious one) are a genuine option in Auckland’s climate if you want the hedge to do two jobs.
The thing to avoid is picking on looks alone. Ask what a species does in your conditions in ten years, not what it looks like in a photo.
How far apart to plant them
This is the question people get most wrong, in both directions.
The honest answer is that it depends on the species’ mature width and how fast you want the hedge to close. As a rule of thumb, small-leaved formal hedging goes in closer, often 30 to 40cm apart, while larger screening shrubs sit anywhere from 60cm to over a metre apart depending on the plant.
Planting too close does not make a better hedge. It makes plants that compete with each other for water and light, go bare at the bottom, and cost you more up front. Planting too far apart leaves gaps that take years to close and may never close properly at the base.
Get the mature width of the specific plant you are buying and space at roughly half to two-thirds of it. Whoever is selling you a hundred plants should be able to tell you exactly.
What grade to buy, and the counterintuitive bit
Nursery plants are sold by pot size (1.5 litre, 5 litre, 25 litre and so on) and the temptation is to buy the biggest you can afford to get an instant hedge.
Often the smaller grade is the better buy. Younger plants establish faster, suffer less transplant shock, and within two or three years frequently overtake the larger stock planted at the same time. They are also dramatically cheaper, which matters when you need forty of them.
Buy the large grade when you genuinely need immediate screening and are willing to pay for it. Otherwise, smaller and more of them.
When to plant
Autumn through winter, so the plants get the wet months to establish roots before their first summer. Auckland’s mild winters make this an easy window.
Planting in late spring or summer is possible but commits you to watering through the dry months, and a new hedge that misses water in its first February is unlikely to recover evenly. You will end up with gaps.
The first two summers decide everything
New hedging needs consistent deep watering through its first two summers. Not a daily sprinkle, which trains roots to stay at the surface, but a proper soak less often.
Mulch heavily, keeping it off the stems. Keep the row weed-free, because grass competing at the base is a slow strangle. And trim lightly from early on rather than waiting for the hedge to reach full height, early trimming is what produces density at the bottom, and a hedge that has gone bare at the base cannot be fixed later.
Also worth checking before you start: Auckland Council has rules about protected trees and about planting near boundaries and services, and a phone call is cheaper than moving forty plants.
Where Growing Plants fits
Growing Plants is a wholesale nursery in Auckland, run by the team behind Growing Gardens, a landscaping business working across the greater Auckland area. They started growing their own stock because they wanted plants they could trust in their own landscaping projects, and now supply landscapers and home gardeners alike.
That background is the useful part here: the people you are talking to install hedges as well as grow them, so the question “will this work on my site” gets a practical answer rather than a label read back to you.
Their range covers hedging, natives, trees, shrubs, grasses, perennials, groundcovers and edibles, and the selection changes constantly with what is ready, so it is worth asking rather than assuming.
The nursery is open by appointment so they can walk you through what is available and in what grade. Phone 09 448 2196 or email nu*****@***************co.nz to arrange a visit.
