By Tanya Kucak

Look around any neighborhood, and you’ll see rows of shrubs marking at least one boundary of many properties. Blocking undesirable views, muting noise, deflecting wind, providing shade and privacy, and keeping out dust are some of the services a hedge provides.

But instead of a flat, green monoculture, what if these boundaries were planted with an undulating, multilayered assortment of evergreens and deciduous shrubs, with displays of flowers and fruit throughout the year?

For one thing, songbirds would come to the banquet. The greater the variety of shrubs, the greater the variety of birds will visit to hide from predators and raise their young as well as to eat insects and berries.

Though a hedgerow might be 5- to 10-feet wide, its entertainment value is much higher than a monochrome hedge, and with proper plant selection, it will require minimal maintenance.

Add a birdbath nearby, and if you’re like many people, you’ll spend hours watching who comes to visit. Soon you’ll learn to identify local birds and figure out their favorite plants. (You can choose plants to attract specific birds, too.)

Native plants are especially attractive to wildlife. You can choose natives that don’t mind the occasional overspray or runoff, or to save money on your water bill, choose natives that don’t need to be watered once they are established.

Planted near a vegetable garden, a hedgerow can nurture pollinators and other beneficial insects to improve yields and plant health.

Good hedgerow design balances repeating motifs with enough variety to ensure year-round bloom, creating a living tapestry. In a young hedgerow, fast-growing shrubs can fill the spaces between slow growers, then get thinned out as the other plants grow together gracefully.

For instance, a hedgerow on a dry, sunny slope or berm can include fast-growing cleveland sage, blue-flowering Ray Hartman ceanothus, deciduous elderberry and mountain mahogany, interspersed with slower-growing manzanitas and underplanted with native buckwheats.

Add spiny plants such as California wild rose (which can form thickets if irrigated), gooseberries or barberries to deter predators and to make the hedgerow impenetrable to trespassers.

Monitor the hedgerow regularly for volunteer pest plants, such as privet, cotoneaster, tree-of-heaven and blackwood acacia. Such plants may outcompete desirable plants while providing no benefits to wildlife. If your neighborhood has many of these pest plants, you may want to leave out spiny plants, which can make weeding a painful chore.

To keep your hedgerow within bounds in a limited area, be sure to select plants whose mature size fits your space. Avoid shearing the plants, which reduces or eliminates the show of flowers and fruit, ruins the structure of the plants for wildlife and makes the plants more susceptible to pests and diseases.

Horticulturist Tanya Kucak grows natives, edibles and herbs organically. E-mail her at yarrow@sfo.com.