Restoring a 66-Metre Commercial Hedge in Slacks Creek

In July 2026 we cut back a 66 metre boundary hedge at a commercial property on a main road frontage in Slacks Creek. It took three visits across four days and about 14 hours on site. This is what that kind of job involves, and why the finished result looks worse before it looks better.

Why the hedge needed rectification, not trimming

There is a real difference between trimming a hedge and rectifying one.

Trimming keeps a hedge at the size it already is. You take the season's growth off and the hedge stays where you want it. Rectification is what you need once a hedge has outgrown its position entirely and no amount of surface trimming will bring it back.

This hedge had reached that point. It had grown up over the security fence and out across the footpath and parking bays. Trimming the outside of it would have kept the same oversized hedge, just neater. The only way to get it back to a workable size was to cut into the old wood and start the shape again.

What was actually wrong

The problems were practical rather than cosmetic:

• The hedge had grown tall enough to block the view from the property onto a busy intersection
• It had grown well above its retaining wall and out over the verge along the full length of the run
• It had grown into the parking bays, so cars were parking into foliage
• It had grown up through and over the security fence, which defeats the point of the fence
• The pedestrian stair entry from the street had narrowed to a gap between two overgrown shrubs

The work

We cut the hedge back hard on all faces, reducing both height and depth to re-establish a line the property can actually maintain. That meant cutting into bare wood in most sections.

The run was done over three visits rather than one. The first visit was the long one at around nine hours, covering the main boundary run. The second and third dealt with the remaining sections, the stair entry and the car park faces, and cleared all the arisings. Splitting it that way kept the car park usable and meant we were not blocking bays for a full working day.

All green waste left the site with us.

Before and after

A word on what you are looking at. In several of these the hedge appears bare and twiggy afterwards. That is the point of a rectification cut, not a mistake. Cutting into old wood removes the leaf cover, and the plant reshoots from those cut points over the following weeks. Come back in a couple of months and it is a dense hedge again at the new, lower size.

The boundary run, footpath and entry

The main boundary run, cut back hard on the face and top, bringing the hedge back inside its retaining timber.

The same run from the street. The hedge had grown high above the retaining wall and out over the verge along its full length.

The stair entry from the street, with the shrubs either side cut back to open the access and the sightline down to the footpath.

Sightlines, car park and access

Growth taken back down off the security fence line. Sightlines onto the intersection are open again, and the fence can do its job.

Height taken out of the main road frontage hedge, restoring the outlook from the property across to the road.

The car park face brought back to a defined line and height, off the parking bays.

Bays cleared back to the painted line so vehicles are not parking into foliage.

Height reduced across the car park boundary, opening up the view for vehicles reversing and turning.

The corner section reduced in height and squared up against the retaining wall.

What it takes on a commercial frontage

Two things make a job like this different from a residential hedge.

The first is scale. At 66 metres you are not working off a ladder for an afternoon. You need commercial gear, a plan for the arisings, and enough hours booked that you are not leaving a half-cut hedge on a public frontage overnight.

The second is that the work happens in public. The frontage stays visible to customers and passing traffic the whole time, and the footpath belongs to everyone. That shapes the scheduling as much as the horticulture does, which we cover in working on operating commercial and industrial sites.

Afterwards

The client stayed on with us after this job. That is usually how rectification works out: the hard cut is the expensive part, and once a hedge is back to a size that suits the site, keeping it there is a routine trim two or three times a year.

If you leave it another five years, you pay for the rectification again.

If your hedge has got away from you

We do hedge rectification and restoration across Logan, on commercial frontages and residential boundaries alike. You can read more on our hedge renovation and restoration page, or see how it fits into our commercial grounds maintenance services. To get a price, ask us for a quote.

Worth knowing before you call: if a hedge is badly overgrown, we will tell you what it will look like immediately after the cut. Some clients would rather live with an oversized hedge than a bare one for two months, and that is a fair choice to make with the facts in front of you.