Common laurel, perfect for an evergreen hedge

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Thick, leathery evergreen leaves, flowers in April and growth quick enough to close a gap fast: common laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) is the standard shrub where you want to block a view and dull the noise of a passing road. Space the stems about a metre apart and prune regularly, and the foliage knits into a dense, sound-absorbing wall.

It is appreciated for its rapid growth and its view-breaking properties.

Planting common laurel

You can plant common laurel from October to March with a preference for fall to favor root development before winter.

In the hedge, place the base of each stem at least 32 inches (80 cm) to 3 feet (1 meter) apart for a hedge around 6 ½ feet (2 meters) feet tall. If you need to climb higher, space the plants a bit more.

• Common laurel prefer locations with high exposure to sunlight.
• It can tolerate any type of soil.
• Look up our advice on planting shrubs.

During dry spells, water deeply and less often to encourage deeper rooting, and keep mulch over the root zone, which suppresses rather than eliminates competing grass and weeds.

Pruning common laurel

There are 2 pruning seasons for your common laurel, in spring and in fall.

It is a shrub that can bear pruning well, even heavy pruning.

• In hedges, if you want to slow its growth, opt to prune annually in fall, as the sap descends.
• If you prune in spring, your common laurel will develop faster.
• Refer to our guidelines on how to correctly prune shrubs.

• Cut common laurel with secateurs or loppers rather than a hedge trimmer.
• On privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium), the black berries form from the spent white flower spikes, so if you want fruit leave the flowered shoots uncut until late winter; shearing after flowering removes them.
• Never leave cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) clippings where horses, cattle or sheep can reach them, because the leaves contain cyanogenic compounds that can release hydrogen cyanide and poison livestock that eat them.

Common laurel and diseases

It is a shrub that is quite resilient to most diseases, but isn’t without its own share of parasite attacks, especially aphids.

They are easy to recognize on the underside of leaves, they are small green-colored insects.

• Here is how to treat against aphids

When leaves turn yellow or begin to lose their color, it usually means that some type of nutrient is lacking in the soil, and adding fertilizer might be necessary.

Finally, if orange spots appear on the common laurel, it is due to silver leaf disease. The only solution is to eliminate infected specimens, because there is no known treatment and it would spread to the entire common laurel hedge if left unchecked.

Telling common laurel problems apart

Common laurel shrugs off most diseases, but three troubles do turn up on hedges. What you see on the leaves tells you which one you are dealing with.

Only silver leaf disease calls for grubbing plants out; the other two are easily put right.

Toxicity of common laurel

Common laurel, also called cherry laurel, contains cyanide that one should of course never ingest.

Some herbivores can even die from it, as well as animals such as dogs who might try to taste the common laurel’s leaves, branches, or fruits.

• Keep prunings out of paddocks; wilted cherry laurel is still lethal to horses.
• If a dog has chewed cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) leaves, contact a vet immediately, because its cyanogenic glycosides can release cyanide and cause rapid-onset signs such as breathing difficulty, staggering and collapse.

Common laurel, a natural sound barrier

Common laurel is an excellent natural sound barrier.

If you live near a busy passing road, near a highway or simply in a noisy neighborhood, this shrub is one of the best possible natural sound barriers there are.

Due to its dense foliage made of thick, leathery leaves, noise is absorbed and reduced much more than most other types of shrubs.

• Planting the specimens rather close together will quickly give you a nice plant wall.
• Regular pruning will make foliage even denser, which will heighten the sound-absorbing performance.

For hedging specifically, one cultivar is planted more than all the others: Prunus laurocerasus ‘Rotundifolia’, faster growing and broader in the leaf.

And also:

• Oleander
• Laurestine
• Bay laurel

Credits for images shared to Nature & Garden (all edits by Gaspard Lorthiois):
Laurel berries by Ulrike Leone under Pixabay license
Common laurel floral buds by Hans Braxmeier under Pixabay license
Common laurel hedge by Roger Eavis ★ under © CC BY 2.0

Birds spread many black-berried shrubs, such as elder, privet and buckthorn, dropping seeds in hedgerows and woodland, where any unwanted seedlings are easiest to pull up while their roots are still small.