A hedge is the one part of a property that looks worse every week it is ignored. Cedars go shaggy and brown out at the bottom, boxwoods lose their lines, and the shrubs along the foundation start eating the windows. Trimmed properly and on time, the same plants are the sharpest thing on the street.
A Cut Above trims hedges and shrubs across Guelph as a standalone visit or as part of your regular maintenance — shaped correctly so they stay thick to the ground, timed to the plant rather than the calendar, and with every clipping raked, bagged and hauled away.
What hedge trimming includes
When to trim hedges in Guelph
Timing is most of the job. Cedars and other evergreen hedges take their main trim in late spring or early summer once the new growth has flushed, with a light second pass in late summer if they are growing hard — never a heavy cut in late fall, which leaves fresh cuts to freeze and brown through winter. Spring-flowering shrubs like lilac, forsythia and early spirea get trimmed right after they bloom, because next year’s flowers are set on this year’s wood; cut them in fall and you cut off the spring show. Summer-flowering shrubs and most foundation plantings are happiest shaped in early spring before they leaf out, or lightly tidied midsummer.
Most clients book one main trim in June and a tidy-up in late August or September. Fast-growing privacy hedges on a busy property line sometimes want three.
Shape matters more than sharpness
Anyone can run a trimmer along a hedge. The difference between a hedge that gets denser every year and one that slowly hollows out is the taper: a slightly narrower top lets light reach the bottom branches so the hedge stays green to the ground. We also stop well short of the old wood on cedars — cut back past the green and cedar does not regrow, it just stays brown. On overgrown hedges we bring the size down over two or three seasons rather than scalping them once, which is the honest way to recover a hedge without losing it.
Part of the property, not a separate problem
Hedge trimming fits naturally into the rest of what we do on a Guelph property: bed edging and mulch after the trim so the beds look finished, weeding while we are in there, and regular mowing around it all. Booking it with your seasonal cleanup or as an add-on to your mowing contract is usually the cheapest way to keep everything sharp at once.
What we do not do is climb trees. Hedges, shrubs and anything reachable from the ground or a step ladder is our work; large tree pruning and removals are arborist work, and we will point you to one.
Common Questions
Service Area
Hedge and shrub trimming across all of Guelph — Kortright Hills, Clairfields, Westminster Woods, Hanlon Creek, Pineridge, Grange Hill East, Exhibition Park, St. George’s Park, Riverside Park, the Ward and surrounding neighbourhoods.
From our Guelph lawn care guides
- Spring lawn care checklist for Guelph → — where bed and shrub work fits in the season
- Fall lawn care checklist for Guelph → — the late-season tidy before winter
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