hedging issues part II

It's not just the Eleagnus hedge that's proving a mixed blessing,  The ivy hedge around the long bed is problematical as well, in its own way.  There are many beautiful varieties of ivy, and I still consider it to be an attractive and interesting plant, but as the years go by I become less and less clear how it can be used in a garden setting, other than on a truly grand scale as ground cover under an extremely large tree.  The long bed was not originally intended to be bounded by a hedge, but I found in the early days of the garden that unless I put up wire netting against the rabbits, everything in it got eaten.  Then I wanted something to hide the rabbit wire, and hit upon ivy because I could not afford that much box, and did not want to be committed to cutting it.  That was a good call.  One of the reasons why we have the sort of informal garden that we do was that I knew I lacked the inclination or discipline to manage more than a token amount of formal hedging.

Ivy was evergreen, and affordable because one plant could be asked to cover a good length of wire, once it got going.  And it did take its time to get going.  For several years I was left looking at the wire with lengths of ivy randomly distributed across it, before it finally disappeared.  It didn't help that we had a couple of viciously dry summers soon after moving in, before we went on to mains water, and the supply from the well was finite as well as being at very low pressure, so that the ivy didn't really get irrigated.  Plus it was planted on some of the lightest and most infertile soil in England.  Anyway, it got going eventually, and began to show me what it was capable of.

It could cover the ground, that's for sure.  If anything it was keener on running out across the surface of the bed and over the gravel than it was on climbing on its wire.  I raised that as an objection when one of the Writtle tutors introduced the idea of ivy on wire as an effective screen where space was limited, and she looked at me with a combination of irritation and scorn and said that it was not difficult, you simply trimmed it.  Obviously you can trim it, but pruning something at ground level, which roots as it goes and threads its way through other plants, then leaves a trail of leathery leaves behind when you rip the shoots out from among them is hard and fiddly work.

After many years the ivy has found a new game.  It does not run across the borders quite so enthusiastically as it used to, as more and more sections of the hedge are shifting to produce mature, flowering shoots.  Most of you are probably familiar with ivy's dual identity, but for anybody who isn't, the clinging, climbing shoots are ivy in its juvenile form.  When it finally decides it has got to the top of wherever it is going, it switches to producing non-clinging shoots, with leaves that don't look especially like the juvenile ones, often less distinctly lobed, and these shoots produce flowers in the autumn, followed by black berries.  They are perfectly attractive, but destroy the uniformity of a hedge when they mix themselves up with stretches of ivy which have not yet stopped climbing and started flowering.  Fortunately our garden is not big on uniformity, so that is not a major issue.  However, they add considerably to the bulk of the hedge, which is only supposed to be a low boundary around a mixed border, and it is difficult to find leafy growth to prune them back to as much as I would like.  My efforts to keep the hedge to the size I'd like are therefore tending to leave it with odd bald patches.

Perhaps in more skilful and disciplined hands the ivy would behave better, but all I can say is that I have never heard either of these two mischievous habits discussed by any of the gardening experts or authors who recommend ivy on wire as a convenient, low width screen.