You want to screen off your house from the neighbours, or you want peace from the sound and dust and petrol fumes off the road. And you want it quick. So you get Leyland cypress. At times it seems to be the most popular hedging plant of all. Latin name cupresso-cyparis leylandii. Gardening landscapers like it, in a way, because a few years after they have planted it for you, their services are required to cut it back. It grows quickly; H. R. Edlin, in his Guide to Tree Planting and Cultivation, writes that it puts on three feet per year. An expert who has observed it in England and Ireland says that, here, it grows into a bushier shape. It may be, of course, that we have a slightly different version.
Edlin: "it forms a shapely oval pyramid [?] of a restful mid-green. It's only fault is that it may soon grow too large for a limited position, but is easily restrained by clipping." Thus a conversation with our friend the landscaper which regularly takes place: "Where are you going tomorrow?" Answer: Bloody Leylandii again." Still, in winter it gives regular employment. Keep clipping, and regularly, and it's all right.
And incidentally, Leylandii planted in the middle of a rather boggy, windy position, near a river, 20 years ago, are now something over 40 feet high and, at the base, the same landscaper says, are almost two feet in diameter. Whether the wood is good for anything, or not, that is some growth. Same man says that to root out a well-grown Leylandii is ferocious work.
Interesting is how lately this hybrid came into our lives. In 1888 a Mr C. J. Leyland, a leading arboriculturist, according to Edlin, found the new hybrid remarkable - on both of his large forest estates, one in Northumberland and the other in mid-Wales. Presumably through cross-pollination. The parents, in both cases, were the Monterey cypress and the Nootka cypress from Alaska. There are, writes Edlin, naturally several clones, differing slightly in character. It is easily increased by cuttings. According to the same source, Leylandii became widely promoted in England only from about 1950 on. It makes fine hedging, but better to know what you're getting yourself into. Y