We don't apply universal hedge care rules regardless of what's growing. An arborvitae hedge and a yew hedge look superficially similar—both evergreen, both dense, both used for screening. But they respond completely differently to cutting. Arborvitae won't regenerate once you're past green needles into brown wood. Yew regenerates vigorously from bare stems. This difference determines everything about size control, renovation potential, gap filling, and long-term maintenance approach.

The same species-specific thinking applies to every hedge decision. Formal shearing works beautifully on boxwood and yew because they tolerate it and regenerate from old wood. The same approach on arborvitae creates eventual problems when the dense outer shell blocks all interior light and you can't reduce further without hitting brown. Privacy hedge spacing depends on growth rate and mature size—tight spacing fast growers creates immediate screening but permanent high maintenance, while wider spacing slow growers takes patience but delivers lower long-term costs.

This approach requires more initial assessment than generic hedge care, but it prevents the expensive mistakes we see repeatedly: topped hedges that won't recover, formal hedges transitioned to informal maintenance losing their character, privacy screens with gaps that can't fill naturally, new plantings that fail from improper depth or inadequate establishment care. Getting it right from the start—matching species to site, technique to biology, expectations to reality—creates hedges serving their purpose for decades with manageable effort.