![\"Gardening](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0_Beech-Hedge.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIrish households should take note as an important rule regarding hedges across the country, including garden hedges, is set to change for the coming six months<\/p>\n
18:46, 19 Aug 2026Updated 18:57, 19 Aug 2026<\/p>\n
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Gardening experts say the best time to cut a beech hedge is in late summer, ideally in August(Image: Getty)<\/p>\n
Irish homes that have garden hedges should be aware of an upcoming rule change starting from September.<\/p>\n
For the past number of months, people around Ireland have been banned from cutting any hedges<\/a> due to strict rules regarding how they can be maintained throughout the year.<\/p>\n From 1 March and 31 August<\/a>, you are prohibited from destroying, cutting, burning or grubbing – which refers to digging or excavating.<\/p>\n There are some limited exemptions to the restriction, including where cutting is necessary for public health or safety, such as clearing vegetation that is obstructing a public road or affecting sightlines.<\/p>\n Certain agricultural and forestry activities, as well as some road and construction works, may also qualify. However, these exemptions do not give people permission to disturb nesting birds: nests and eggs of protected wild birds remain protected throughout the year, so anyone carrying out work should check for nesting activity first.<\/p>\n However, this ban will come to an end on Tuesday, 1 September, until the end of February.<\/p>\n The reason behind the ban is to do with wildlife as it allows birds and other mammals to find a mate and rear their young.<\/p>\n Many of these species are endangered, with the ban aimed at improving their chances of breeding successfully.<\/p>\n If you see someone illegally cutting a hedge during the banned period, people are asked to report it.<\/p>\n You can do this by contacting your local National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) office or your local Garda<\/a> station.<\/p>\n When you see a violation take place, you should also make note of certain information, including time and date of the incident, plus the registration of any vehicles involved.<\/p>\n This is because whoever you report the crime to may not be able to respond immediately.<\/p>\n It has also been explained that it might be useful to take a photo of the incident, especially to record the vehicle registration number, however, you don\u2019t need to send these to the NPWS or Garda\u00ed when reporting the incident.<\/p>\n Want to see more of the stories you love from RSVP ?<\/a> To add RSVP as a preferred source of news on Google, simply click here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish households should take note as an important rule regarding hedges across the country, including garden hedges, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,1658,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-648457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-property","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117131619788461835","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}