Plants for Clay Soil

Hedges For Clay Soil – So often you hear gardeners lamenting about wanting to grow x, y and z plants in their gardens only to qualify it with ‘but we are on clay’, as if it is some kind of soil-borne deficiency or shortcoming. The thing is – clay really is an excellent soil for growing so many plants in, it’s just brilliant holding much more water than other soil types in dry weather and nutrients are also held more strongly within it keeping them available for your plants to take up instead of being leached out by rain. Whenever you improve clay-based soil with fertilisers, composts or mulches – the benefit of these improvements are reaped for longer than most other types of soil.

Excuse me for waxing lyrical, it can also be frustrating dried out and cracked like badly laid concrete in Summer and resembling a paddy field in Winter – we know all of this from experience at Hopes Grove Nurseries because the nursery is on clay here in Kent!

The thing is, having grown in it for almost 30 years now I can confidently say that the good outweighs the bad. By choosing how and when you work the soil, and by adding plenty of organic matter such as compost or well-rotted manure it can be greatly improved giving success with any of our hedges for clay soil. If drainage is a real problem, try adding some coarse grit as well. If you are determined to have a hedge species that prefers dry conditions such as Yew or Beech and drainage is a problem, you may even like to consider installing some perforated drainage pipe to get rid of excess water. (Or take a look at our list of recommended hedging plants for wet sites)