I wrote in a previous post that I am planning to install an impenetrable hedge at the front of our new property.
Christa has a plant suggestion:
“You mentioned one of the things you wanted to do was plant a TERRIFYING DEATH HEDGE and I thought that you must try The Cherokee Rose. My daughter and son in law sent me a little plant from ANTIQUE ROSE EMPORIUM because they had named their firstborn, Cherokee Rose. Well, it was a sweet thought but this thing is a monster that could compete with The Little Shop of Horrors. I have a small yard and cut the rose back vigorously a few times a year. I am afraid it will take out an unwary pedestrians eye as it reaches over my 6 ft. fence with menacing tentacles. I don’t have the heart to take it out….yet, but have thought it would make a great barrier to keep large animals and/or people out, or in, a certain space. It blooms gloriously once in the Spring. Just an idea.”
I do not know much about roses, so I looked the variety up. According to the Antique Rose Emporium in Texas:
“A native of southern China and Taiwan, this rose was introduced early to North America and has now become thoroughly established here. It was first botanically described from a specimen growing in Georgia and is that state’s official flower. ‘The Cherokee Rose’ is a mounding bush to about 5 feet, or a thickly foliaged climber to 15 feet with neat, apple-green leaves. In the spring, fragrant, pure white, 5-petaled flowers appear and cleanly drop their petals to disclose star-shaped sepals. It is one of the best for naturalizing in the South since it does not sucker (unlike the ‘Macartney Rose’, with which it is often confused) and offers an outstanding floral display in return for very little care.”
It sounds like a good candidate. Beautiful and vicious!
My current death hedge plant list for the new property includes osage orange, black locust, silverthorn, trifoliate orange and Mysore raspberry. I’ll add Cherokee rose (and perhaps some other roses) to the list. There are half-wild pink roses with terrible thorns and very long, rambling canes, growing about old homesteads here. Daisy started some from cuttings already. I should have thought of using them!
Good idea, Christa.
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I have a couple of old fashioned climbing roses in my front yard, and I have to cut them back for fear of them attacking small children. It is a good choice for a security hedge, it is vigorous, and it makes heavier growth than Himalaya Blackberry, which may not grow where you are. Some of the older variety roses make long heavy canes that would be ideal for tying together a combination of plants in a hedge, and some varieties make dense, matted thickets on their own which are great nesting areas for birds, and of course, the thorns and the masses of flowers and the rose hips.
The only addition I have for your list is the Japanese Quince, which makes a wonderful screening hedge with wicked thorns that has some of the earliest, coral colored blooms of the season.
The Oregon Department of Transportation decided to plant rose thickets down the center margin between the two paved lanes of the I-5 freeway between Salem and Portland when that stretch was first completed. It was considered a cheap and effective barrier that would block oncoming headlights, and when mature, the thickets would act to slow and catch cars that veered off the pavement towards the oncoming lanes. It was also very pretty in the Spring.
Once the thickets got big enough to be effective, the State Police Troopers started complaining that they were unable to get through it and ODOT had to go in and clear gaps between the paved areas so the patrols wouldn’t have to go to the nearest exit to get to the opposite direction in emergencies.
(ODOT once tried to use dynamite to clear a dead sperm whale from the beach, by the way, so they have a history of getting things nearly right)
Oodham Devils Claw and Purple Devil- 90 days- Solanum atropurpurean are possibilities. Description of Purple Devil: ” It makes barbed wire look tame by comparison.”
Wild(er) pears can be pretty pokey too.
That sounds awesome.
I have decided that if we ever own a nice swatch of property, the very first thing I will do once the survey is done is to fully plant the property line with osage orange. It’s easily grown up here (the local coal company has it planted over land that they dig under). I’ll take some of the fruits, mush them up with a little water and ferment a bit, then just pour into a property line trench. Let the strong survive, and weave the growing branches together for a lovely, thorny, evil hedge. :)
That is a great idea.
Ensnare your enemies in strategically chosen and planted foliage. Then, compost them.
A+++
One of my hedges is pyracantha (firethorn).
Beautiful evergreen, amazing clusters of orange berries. You can also get yellow and red Berry variants.
From Wikipedia “The thorns are easily able to puncture human skin, and when successful, the piercing causes a slight inflammation and severe pain. Their dense thorny structure makes them particularly valued in situations where an impenetrable barrier is required.”
I love it. I hate pruning it and always come away wounded.
I can help but wonder if you can hedge a row of densely planted zanthoxylum Vltava-herculis/ toothache tree, I’ve bumped into them hiking. Vicious looks with a numbing touch lol
Clava-herculis*
That’s a good one. They are awesome.
Some currants and gooseberries have pretty nasty thorns (I think it’s Poorman that I have). Hawthorns too. I got one stuck 1/2 in my heel one time. Now I wear real shoes around them…
Don’t know if red barberry fits your list. Maybe it’s South Hardy. Grew up on suburban lot with property line of it. It was my dad’s solution for neighbors. Sure hurt! Recently thinking of some for my property. Then found your blog. lol from Ohio.
I will check!
I missed the why of this death hedge but it sounds self-explanatory. I haven’t tried it specifically as a hedge (they kind of look like you’re in the Serengeti where I am) but honey locust should fit, Gleditsia triacanthos, so three thorns! Three times the brutality. Supposedly there are places in the world where Bill Mollison is cursed for ever planting them.
https://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/77146/#b
purple devil- i might try it !
I’ve been looking into fence hedges lately too. And doing a lot of work with citrus pruning and grafting. I was going to suggest trifoliate orange, but you already have it. Make sure you look into the flying dragon subspecies – it’s even more evil than regular trifoliate. On either, you can try grafting good citrus on the inside of the hedge so you can harvest from it. But that will take some work to keep the rest pruned and stunted, otherwise the trifoliate part will outgrow the true citrus leaving it to starve.
Are you still planning to write that death hedge book? I’ve been waiting for that one a long time… My husband floated this idea to me years and years ago, before I ever found your channel, when we were talking about all the passive defense systems we’d like to put in place around a property if we had the resources. He had some excellent ideas, although many of the most effective defensive barrier plants, we had to ultimately rule out due to concerns about inadvertently harming innocent passersby or wayward children wandering through looking for lost balls and such.