hedging difficulties

The wind got up through the day, until by mid afternoon it was blowing a full yachtsman's gale.  I don't think it touched a true gale, but at one point it was strong enough to blow my Tilley hat off my head.  Leaves, still green, started to come off the cherry trees and scatter across the lawn, and vast quantities of dry brown leaves were suddenly dislodged from the Eleagnus hedge and spread across the gravel.

That was annoying.  I had it on my list of things to do to scoop up the narrow line of fallen leaves lying along the base of the hedge, but now a zillion times more were littered over a much greater area.  If I don't get them cleared away first thing tomorrow, they will spread themselves still further, right across the turning circle, if they don't anyway during the night.  Dead leaves can have a mournful, appropriate charm at the right time of year, though old Eleagnus x ebbingei leaves are pretty leathery and horrid, but in the middle of summer they just look messy.  And they do not go well with the beach themed treatment of that end of the turning circle.  Breakwater made out of authentic reclaimed timber, check.  Shells of limpets and cockles hand picked from Britain's and Normandy's beaches while on holiday, check.  Sea kale.  Sea thrift.  Sea lavender.  Sea campion.  All present and correct.  Oh, and a lot of dead brown leaves.

I have mixed feelings about the Eleagnus hedge.  It grows so fast, and looks so dreadful when cut back to virtually the same line that it has inexorably got wider with the years, and spills on to the drive.  It has to be cut back specially for oil deliveries, and anything else planned involving a large vehicle, and I daren't ask the aggregates delivery driver to even attempt to come right into the garden.  This August we are going to have to bite the bullet, and with our hearts in our mouths (or at least my heart in my mouth) cut the side of it along the drive really hard, a good three feet out of it, probably four or more.  Perhaps it will die.  Or perhaps some plants in it will die, which is something Eleagnus x ebbingei tends to do around this age, according to the books.

And yet it is such a useful hedge.  It makes a fabulous windbreak.  The difference this afternoon between the exposed side and the downwind one was dramatic.  And the silvery leaves are handsome, and make a better visual backdrop for the gravel planting than clipped hornbeam would do.  It is drought tolerant, and fixes its own nitrogen.  The small white flowers in autumn smell deliciously of clove carnations (though we will have to sacrifice half of them to cut it), and are followed by fruit which the birds love (including the chickens).  Blackbirds nest in it without fail every year.  For a wild, windy country garden it has a lot to commend it.

I have seen Eleagnus x ebbingei planted around the neat little front garden of a newly built house, and laughed inwardly, in a hollow, schadenfreudish sort of way.  Once it got going the occupants would not be able to see out of their ground floor windows, and barely out of their second storey ones.  In fact, they would not be able to get into the garden at all.  The only way you could have kept it to an acceptable size would have been by clipping it so often and so hard that it wouldn't have had any leaves.