How Much Does a Privacy Hedge Cost in New Hampshire?

A privacy hedge in New Hampshire costs about $27 to $60 per linear foot, planted. For a 100-foot run that is roughly $2,669 at the low end and $5,900 at the high end, and the entire difference is how tall the plants are the day they go in the ground.

Those are our own numbers, not a national average. We are a nursery in Newton, New Hampshire. We grow a good share of what we sell and buy the rest straight from other growers — no broker, no re-handling, no sitting on a garden-centre lot for a month. We deliver it and we plant it across New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine. Everything below is what we actually charge as of today, with the volume discount already applied.

• $26.69per foot, 100 ft of 3–4 ft Emerald Green, planted
• $30per plant to have us plant it, $300 minimum
• $50cheapest screening plant we sell
• 0%sales tax in New Hampshire

What 100 feet actually costs

Every row below is a real quote: our current price, the spacing that variety needs, the plant count that spacing produces, and the volume discount that kicks in at that count. Planting is $30 a plant.

Volume discount included. Delivery and sales tax are not in these figures — both are covered further down. Prices are current and change as stock moves.

Shorter runs cost more per foot

Two things work against a small job: the volume discount needs quantity to trigger, and planting carries a $300 minimum that covers the first ten plants whether you use all ten or not. A 25-foot run of 3–4 ft Emerald Green is ten plants, which lands exactly on that floor.

3–4 ft Emerald Green at 3 ft on centre. The count is your run divided by the spacing, plus one plant to close the far end.

Why the per-foot number swings so much

It is almost entirely plant size. A 3–4 ft Emerald Green and a 5–6 ft Emerald Green are the same plant, the same spacing and the same planting labour — the big one just spent two or three more years in a pot being watered, fed and shifted. You are buying those years.

So the real question is not which hedge is cheapest. It is whether you want the screen now or are willing to wait for it. If you can wait, the 3–4 ft grade is the same hedge for about half the money, and it gets there on its own.

The second lever is spacing. Green Giant goes in at 5 ft on centre instead of 3 ft, so a 100-foot run needs 21 plants instead of 35. That is why a $99 plant can come out cheaper per foot than a $60 one.

What this actually buys

Three of our own jobs, photographed the day the crew finished. No staging, no renderings.

Before you budget anything else: the water

Here is why. For the whole first season the plant is still living off its root ball — the roots have not moved out into your soil yet. That root ball is a small volume of mix holding up a big evergreen canopy, and it dries out much faster than the ground around it. So the ground can look damp while the plant is parched.

What that means in practice:

• Soak the base, not the foliage. A hose run slowly at the trunk for ten to twenty minutes per plant, or roughly one to two gallons per foot of plant height. Water needs to go down into the root ball, not across the top of the mulch.
• A lawn irrigation system does not do this. Sprinkler heads put down a fraction of an inch over a wide area. That keeps grass alive; it does not reach the middle of a root ball. If your hedge is in a lawn zone, it still needs to be watered separately.
• Two to three times a week through the first growing season, and every day or two for the first couple of weeks. In a hot, dry stretch, more.
• Rain is rarely enough. A half-inch shower wets the surface and runs off the crown of the plant. Check the root ball with your fingers rather than going by the forecast.
• Keep watering into the fall, right up until the ground freezes. This is the one most people miss. Arborvitae are evergreen — they keep losing moisture through their foliage all winter while the roots sit in frozen ground and cannot replace it. A plant that goes into December dry is the plant that comes out of March brown. Most "winter kill" we get called about is actually a drought that happened the previous autumn.
• You can overdo it in heavy clay. If the hole holds standing water, you have a drainage problem, and more water will make it worse rather than better.

Year two the plant is into your soil and needs far less. Year three it is largely on its own. It is really that first season that decides whether you got a hedge or an expensive row of sticks — and it is the part of the job that is yours, not ours.

What is not in the number

Delivery

We deliver up to 75 miles from Newton. The fee depends on your zip code, and every zone goes free once the order is large enough — which, at hedge sizes, it almost always is.

Every hedge in the tables above clears the free-delivery threshold in all four zones. Pickup at the nursery is free.

Sales tax

New Hampshire has no sales tax, so a hedge delivered to a New Hampshire address is taxed at nothing. Massachusetts is 6.25% and Maine is 5.5%, and in both states the tax applies to the plants only — not to the planting labour and not to the delivery.

On a $2,669 hedge that is $0 in New Hampshire, about $101 in Massachusetts and about $89 in Maine.

How to get the price down

• Buy the smaller grade. The single biggest lever, by a wide margin. Same plant, same final hedge, roughly half the cost.
• Plant it yourself. Planting is $30 a plant, so it is $1,050 of a $2,669 hedge. Our arborvitae are grown in fabric bags rather than heavy pots — one person can handle any size we carry. The work is in digging the holes, not in moving the trees.
• Do the whole run at once. The discount counts per variety at one size, so splitting a job across two seasons costs you the tier. Ten plants gets 5%, twenty-five gets 7.5%, fifty gets 10%, a hundred gets 12.5%.
• Pick up instead of delivering. Free, if you have the vehicle. A 3–4 ft plant fits in most SUVs; a 6–7 ft tree does not.

Common questions

Pro Growers of New England, 85 South Main St, Newton, NH. Grower-direct: we grow much of our line and source the rest from other growers. Delivery across New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine; installation within 50 miles. The earliest order pickup is the day after you order.