Some woods will burn green , a few months ago I heavily pruned an ornamental cherry and burnt a lot of the twigs and they went very quickly.
On the subject of garden incinerators and bonfires where do barbecues come into this? Granted they are supposed to use charcoal as fuel but there's still a fair bit of smoke from bits of food , packaging , paper towels and all the rest that ends up on them. And then there's people who use them to burn garden waste ....allegedly.

An alternative but involves digging a big hole
https://www.beauty.provenwinners.com/diy-hugelkultur

Some years a go I cut down and burnt a tall, long laylandii hedge, conscientiously (as I thought) choosing a less windy day so smoke and ashes wouldn't blow over next door.

I'd imagined the smoke floating straight up, which it did perfectly... for about 10 feet, before then fanning out like a foggy tide and settling. The garden was in a cul-de-sac surrounded by houses; the whole thing filled with impenetrable, choking smoke which due to the lack of wind stayed put. The fire took hours and hours to burn all the green stuff..

_________________
Kev

Did it look like this ?
kid sets fire to hedge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIF22qCc8J8

Heh, yes the thickness of smoke is spot on; amazingly dense really (in more ways than one in this case!).

I'd not considered burning the hedge 'before' cutting it down though. Could have saved quite a lot of work... until the blue flashing lights appeared, anyway.

_________________
Kev

And what if it was a "real" fire? Would you - in their position - do nothing?