"Some years ago in your column, I think you referred to someone who had put in a line of oak seedlings and intended to clip them tightly as one might do with beech or hornbeam, hoping for a similar effect. Did it work? Did some of the seedlings perform better? . .If the experiment were in any way successful I would be fascinated to see the result, and wonder if the owner would allow me." So wrote a man from the south, a professional, a conservation ranger. Sorry, no memory of that beyond the man who, on acquiring some small oaks and acorns, declared he would line the drive up to his house with them. No memory of clipping or trimming. But it's an intriguing idea. Why not an oak hedge - as distinct from a row of oak trees? A friend, a landscape gardener, doesn't know one but doesn't see why it can't be done. Even if the oaks are pedunculate Quercus robur, which throw their branches out widely. Could you contain that strength with clippers? He's not convinced that it can't be done. What about the bulky, baggy, evergreen oak? It grows to massive height and breadth, but, in its early stages, might it not be contained to hedge proportions? Maybe with several annual clippings?
Most pliable of all, if you can get it, would be the chermes oak, Quercus coccifera, common around the Mediterranean, and which survives here, if you bother. "Shrubby," says H. L. Edlin in The Tree Key, and that's a good start. It has tiny, almost holly-like evergreen leaves, smooth on both sides. Usually it grows to not more than five feet (or less) in its accustomed climate, and it endures in the bleakest of soils. One man who brought back some acorns to this country - and only five or six survived - to be coaxed into growth, never thought of going for a hedge. If he had, he'd have collected more acorns. One, when staked is more than five feet. After seven or eight years, the acorn cup begins to form but soon drops off. Did one friend say that he had bought some from an English nursery? Perhaps, even, some of our own have Quercus coccifera.
Come to think of it, a few southern French versions of evergreen oak, lighter green leaves, spiky like full holly, are wasting away in too-small pots in some corner. Well, with hedges of beech, hornbeam, yew, box, privet and a few others, why not oaks? Thanks to our correspondent for raising the point.