pruning the willows

The Systems Administrator got roped in to help with the gardening today, to trim the willow and ash shooting up at the back of the ditch bed.  I have experimented with using the electric pole saw, but found it too heavy to be controllable.  I'd have been fairly safe at my end of the handle, but the prospect of the bladed tip crashing down unexpectedly on the surrounding plants and any cats or people who happened to be within range made me realise that this was one gardening task where being stronger if not taller was not just desirable, but essential for safety's sake.

The SA does not especially enjoy handling the pole saw.  Trying to cut through branches ten or twelve feet above your head, using a very long handled tool which you can only grasp at one end when most of its weight is concentrated at the other, while simultaneously squinting upwards to see what you are doing and trying not to tread on any of the plants in the border you are standing in, is basically not fun.

Some of the side branches of willow that had grown out over the bed were only lightweight, and their severed ends bounced harmlessly off the hydrangeas and hellebores below.  Rather more problematic were three upright stems of willow and one of ash, that we'd cut back at waist level several years ago, then topped out at around the ten foot mark, that were now pushing twenty feet and leaning out over the ditch bed.  I wanted them to go on the grounds that they would shade the bed too much at the size they were now, and would be even more difficult to remove after another year's growth than they were already.  A special plea was put in on behalf of a small and rather fragile Magnolia stellata growing in the middle of the bed.

The SA decided not to mess around trying to top them off again with the pole saw, and cut them back to waist height instead using the main chain saw, managing to drop each in turn along the back of the border.  I was genuinely impressed, and the weedy magnolia lost only one small twig.  I have never learned to use a chain saw.  I suppose there's no reason why I shouldn't manage at least a lightweight electric model, but the idea seems intimidating.  I heaped gratitude and praise upon the SA, who handed out the cut branches from the back of the border and returned to the house in a trail of glory and electric cables.

My part of the project was to clear up the aftermath.  By the time I'd removed the remaining twigs from the border and tickled up the compost mulch where it had been trodden on, you'd have scarcely known that we'd be in there, and the snowdrops can now finish coming up with no more disturbance.  I think there's a lesson, though, one of those things we didn't think about when starting the garden, which is that if you plant close to mature trees, particularly fast growing and unstable species like willow that are always drooping and sagging over your plantings, you will struggle over the years to keep the trees in order.  I had better keep the regrowth from these willows trimmed as quasi pollards and not let it go shooting up to the twenty foot mark again.