No matter what time it is in my garden, it’s always time to clip the privet. It bounds the front yard on three sides and thrives on a diet of neglect and neighbors’ complaints. I trim and trim. When I am finished with the entire hedge, I start all over again. If I relax with a glass of iced tea within sight of the hedge, it doubles its growth efforts.
Admittedly privet makes a good privacy screen, though I don’t do anything interesting enough to excite the neighbors anyway. Unlike a fence, it isn’t demolished by an onslaught of heavy, wet snow or downed tree branches. Once the snow or limbs are removed it waits a day or two, then bounces back up and gets back to the business of climbing into the stratosphere.
When I am not pruning the privet, I get on my knees to weed out the various rampant species that grow underneath. Among them is the only thing with the horticultural chutzpah go mano a mano with the privet–bird-sown mulberry. I would let the two species duke it out, but I have a feeling that I would be the only loser.