space invader

I have started clearing brambles in the meadow.  I thought I could just about get away with a final burst of clearance, before the birds start nesting in earnest.  I may be an unwise general, opening another front when the existing ones are not yet secure, but I should like to reclaim a measure of control in the meadow.  It will never be wholly garden:  I lack the resources to garden it, and I don't think we'll ever manage to wholly exclude the rabbits, and passing muntjac and badgers.  But some of the shrubs I've planted over the years are alive, as are quite a few of the trees, and if they were underplanted with things that rabbits don't eat, it could be nice, in a wild and woolly sort of way.

The primroses I planted a few years back have done well, and I could see the glint of blue of a pulmonaria and the yellow leaves of Valeriana phu 'Aurea' among the weeds.  Peering in among the brambles, some box has survived, a yellow leaved Philadelphus coronarius, and a Danae racemosa, while an unfortunate Styrax japonica which lost almost all its top growth when I allowed it to become overshadowed by an oak tree that had fallen on its side has sprouted strongly from the base, and is now taller than I am, though getting lopsided again as the oak has advanced on it once more.  It was definitely worth mounting a salvage operation, rather than leaving everything to nature for another season.

Apart from the rabbits, and the muntjac and the badgers, the worst problem by far is something I planted myself.  The bracken is a nuisance, but the self-inflicted invasive plant is worse.  It is Rubus cockburnianus.  Do not plant it, even in a large garden, if short of, say, two hundred acres. It has white bloomy stems, which are undeniably beautiful, but it moves at a frightening and inexorable rate, sending out underground shoots that periodically throw up new clumps of the fine white stems,  Meanwhile, the old stems die, go brown, and fall over, creating a dense litter of twigs among which nothing else grows.  I found a couple of old bird nests as I was clearing the debris, and that was the sum of it.

So far I am only cutting down the stems, and piling them into a great heap, along with the dead ones.  Most of the older stems do come away without having to cut them, and that is the plant's only saving grace.  It is a thug.  A menace.  A thing most utterly not to be countenanced.  To get the roots out, when I've cleared the top growth, I'll have to use the pickaxe, though the roots are not as urgent as the branches.  Chopping down the tangle of branches is urgent, because once there are birds nesting in there I won't be able to touch it until August.  I don't think the Danae or the box will wait that long.

I took the patch back a long way once before, but this time round I am going to have to get rid of every piece I can reach.  It spreads too aggressively.  It is possible to live with some rampant plants, by dint of giving them a good hack every year or two, but not this one.  You can't turn your back on it for an instant.