If you’ve been toying with the idea of planting a hedge, nurseries will be taking orders and dispatching anytime from now until March while the plants are in their dormant state.

So it’s just up to you to decide if you want to get them in before or after Christmas? The only risk you take is that they could, as they did for a friend of mine, turn up on Christmas Eve which is slightly inconvenient to say the least.

If timing is not ideal you can always 'heel them in' temporarily until you are ready to plant them out properly.

Heeling in, or digging a trench anywhere you have space and planting them in it at an angle, keeping them in a bundle is fine. You are not planting them just temporarily keeping them happy and protected in the ground.

Obviously the choice of plants is a personal one and will depend on what effect you desire be it thorny, evergreen or deciduous. If you can, go for a native mix to encourage wildlife.

Evergreen holly being good for berries, deciduous blackthorn for berries and flowers; guelder rose for hips and flowers and hazel for nuts.

A good mixture is to allow three plants of the same species per metre with one each of two other species.

Nurseries normally supply field grown plants in the following ways:

Bare Rooted – the most economical of the choices, normally one year old bare rooted plants. Smaller plants establish better than large ones provided roots are not allowed to dry out.

Bare Rooted Transplants – 2 year old plants that have been lifted and re-planted to allow wider spacing and so encouraging sturdier growth and a good root system to establish.

Feathered Whip – one up again, the plant, having been grown on has had time to develop young branches and so will have more impact when planted than the single stemmed versions above.

Maiden Trees – the most economical way to buy ornamental or fruit trees, these are also still bare rooted and have been grafted onto a rootstock and grown on for a year.

Feathered Tree – similar to feathered whip but has been given more time and space to enable it to develop and produce more side shoots/branches to give greater effect.

Rootballed – these are larger bushier plants that have been, very carefully, lifted from the field keeping their soil and immediate root system in place. The rootball is then wrapped in hessian to keep it together.