It depends on how high you want your hedge to be. Dense yews are shorter than Hicks yews, at least in my experience. We have some dense yews that I've been trying to get more height from since we moved here in 1998. I trim them "rough", and as little as possible, but they're not much taller now than 8 years ago.

We put in about a dozen Hicks yews in 1999 as part of a 100-ft long woody privacy berm. They were 3-ft. high. We spaced them on 4.5-ft. centers, and they've grown nicely into hedge formation. I trim them once a year and I'd say they're about 5-ft tall now. They might have been taller if I hadn't trimmed them each year, but I wanted them to develop a compact habit.

As for fertilizers, I don't think I feed them more than once every 2-3 years. I've used fertilizer spikes for evergreens. I've also used Holly Tone. The soil is very nice, though, and they probably don't need to be fed at all.

They tend to suffer bad winter burn, even with a southern exposure, so sometimes I give the most vulnerable ones some burlap protection for winter. Hope this helps,

Tina McG