Repairing a hedge
Repairing gaps in a Sloe hedge by cutting halfway through the stems
and pushing the bushes over.
December 1992, near Huntly
The same hedge, summer 2000
Letting sunshine into the garden
End of April 2009.
A nice garden, but the big table at the back of the house is shaded
by the tree in mid-morning, just when you'd like to be drinking
coffee there.
The kids use the treehouse so felling is definitely not an option.
There's a caravan permanently sited under the tree,
so dropping even one big branch might make a hole in its roof.
(Click for a bigger picture).
Early May 2009. Same time of day.
The tree looks a bit shell-shocked but the twig that's left on the end
of each stump should help it to recover quickly to look like a proper
tree again. The table is in full sun!!
The caravan that was parked under the tree was undamaged, but it meant
that the job took longer because every branch had to be lowered down with
a rope instead of chucking them down.
(Click for a bigger picture).
Russian Vine
It's rampant, but it's great in the right place. Here it's hiding a place
where an old stone wall was roughly repaired with breezeblocks. There's
only 20 months between the 'before' and 'after' pictures... That's rare!
Normally it would take longer, but the vine was already a few years old,
and just needed to be persuaded to grow in the right direction.
(Click for a bigger picture).
A living handrail
A living handrail beside the steps in my own garden:
I'm making it by cutting halfway through the wee trees and folding them
over. Hoping to have it finished before I'm doddery enough to need it.
Bower
I let the far end of this hedge grow, where it meets the wall, and kept
on pulling the growth over with strings until it made this bower. It's
shady in the summer afternoons, but it faces south-east and even in January,
it gets a bit of mid-morning sun, and it's pleasant to sit (for a short time)
as the bower keeps the breeze off you.
The main hedge is privet and the coloured shrub is weigelia.
An aborted job
This spruce hedge was overhanging the road on one side, and the
washing-line on the other side. Then somebody cut off most of the low
branches, leaving stubby dead branches. I'd been gradually letting in
light to restore it.
I thought I was making good progress: the arrangement was that I'd do
it gradually because if you cut a lot off the branches, you leave dead
bits.
But one day I arrived and the whole lot was felled. The folk got a
block-wall built... not cheap. I think they'd have been better to let me
finish the job. At least i learned how quick you can go about such a
job... Next time I get a similar job, I'll have a clear idea of the
timescale involved.
