I spent today trimming the Eleagnus x ebbingei hedge, or at least the side of it that faces the drive. The Systems Adminstrator had made a start, but the hedge was growing to a point where it was getting impossible for delivery vehicles to get around the turning circle, and since the S.A. is also trying to paint the back of the house and change the gutters, and take the truck for its MOT (fingers crossed on that one), it was agreed that I'd step in as officer in charge of hedges.
It is a large hedge, in every sense. It is over thirty paces long, stretching from the corner of the house almost to the boundary, and is up to the eaves, the equivalent of two storeys high, and starting to tickle the electricity cable. It would like to be equally wide, but then we wouldn't be able to get up the drive. It was planted as a wind-break, and to divide the garden internally between front and back, and it fulfils both of these tasks. Blackbirds nest in it each spring, and birds, including the chickens, eat the fruits. At this time of the year it has small, unshowy white flowers that are deliciously scented of old-fashioned clove carnations, and indeed I feel very mean trimming them off, except that it has to be reduced if we are to have an oil delivery, or a new mattress, or a pallet of strulch, or before long for us to use the turning circle at all, even in a small Skoda.
Eleagnus x ebbingei is an evergreen. The old leaves are olive green, the new ones silvery. It will tolerate strong winds, including coastal ones, and poor, dry soil, otherwise it would not be growing so well in our garden. It has the ability to fix nitrogen itself, a trick shared by other members of its family. It makes long, wand-like new stems, but is not honestly a very graceful or architectural shrub. And it grows fast, and wants to grow very large. When I had a part-time gardening job one summer vacation while I was at Writtle, one of the gardens we tended had an Eleagnus x ebbingei hedge. The house was fairly new, the garden as small as modern front gardens are, and the hedge can't have been there very long. I can't believe it's there now. Within a few years it would have completely filled the garden and covered the front of the house.
Trimming and pruning works up to a point, but the woody structure inside the outer green layer gets inexorably bulkier and more massive. We don't attempt to use an electric hedge trimmer on ours (which would look awful anyway as the leaves are quite large). Instead we trace new growths back to a leaf node, and take them out in such a way as to try and promote new growth from inside the plant. We still get left with old, knobbly ends to the branches, that have been cut back to numerous times, and each time we cut the hedge we lop or saw out some of the most prominent, again trying to stimulate new growth from within. Eleagnus x ebbingei will break from old wood, but it does so grudgingly, and it's better not to leave large bare patches, as they take a long time to cover themselves.
The appearance immediately after pruning is not very satisfactory, neither crisp and formal nor informal, and it's worse now the hedge is so large that I can't reach the middle of the top from the stepladder, so a rough faced-up front ends in a tufty top of unpruned wands. I know now that I should have used hornbeam. It might have taken a few more years to get cover, but after that we would have had a quality barrier that would have outlasted our time in the house. The poor old Eleagnus never looks entirely smart, even as it filters the wind and blocks the view as required. The final element of anxiety comes from my realisation, several years after planting the hedge, that it is not reckoned to be a long-live shrub. Ours has had odd bits of die-back, particularly in the area where there are the remains of the root system of a mature oak (the tree came down in a storm before we bought the house, but the roots remained to make a nuisance of themselves). Overall, however, it is still looking pretty well. In fact this autumn it is looking healthier than it has for a while. I don't know why. The weather must have suited it. But one of these days, maybe soon, who knows, one or two of the plants will die, and then I shall be left with a quandary whether to hire a mini-digger, rip out the hedge, and start again with hornbeam as I should have done in the first place. Which would be very nice once it had grown up, but think of the uncomfortable, exposed years first.
Showing posts with label hedge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hedge. Show all posts
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Thursday, 17 March 2011
starting to dig
I went to see if the wire I renewed on Tuesday was still there, and it hasn't been torn down by militant wildlife yet. So far, so good.
I spent most of the day digging over the area where the Hebe salicifolia used to be. This is one case where my normal no-dig policy doesn't apply, as the ground is full of hebe roots, a creeping weed grass species that's got in there, self-seeded geraniums, Muscari and other small bulbs, and the roots of the ivy hedge that surrounds the bed. The ivy is a mixed blessing. The bed when first planted didn't have a hedge, or anything else, surrounding it, but the rabbits ate so many plants I realised that wire netting was a must. This did the job of keeping the rabbits out, but looked hideous itself. The solution seemed to be to hide it inside a hedge, but I balked at the cost of buying that much box and the ongoing labour of clipping it, so I settled on ivy. The ivy was terribly slow to get going, which was partly because ivy generally takes a season to settle, and partly because the soil was so terrible that everything took a long time to start moving. It did eventually grow, and continues to do so. The downside is that it wants to run out across the surrounding soil as much as it wants to climb, and cutting back ivy running and rooting into the ground is probably as big a job as trimming a box hedge would be. The bed is long although relatively narrow, curving around the side of the drive, so although I haven't measured it (I suppose I must have done when I ordered the ivy but have since forgotten the answer) I guess it is at least 30m all the way round. That's an awful lot of cutting back, which has to be done several times a year. When clipped it looks rather fun, in a quirky way, bulging gently like a cloud-pruned hedge, and bits of it have now matured and want to flower, which adds character. In fact I like the look of it. But it is a lot of work. I smile inwardly when I hear Bunny Guinness advocating ivy on wire netting as a good narrow evergreen hedge, and wonder if she has ever tried maintaining one. The ivy roots do go out a considerable way from the hedge, and are sucking water and nutrition from the already poor soil. I dug quite a lot out to give the new planting a sporting chance. I don't want to kill the hedge, but previous attempts at eradicating ivy have made me think it doesn't give up that easily. Running roots are one drawback of hedges. Privet is the notorious species, but yew roots are dense and far-travelling too.
I often listen to the radio while gardening, especially for maintenance tasks like weeding. For setting out new planting and tricky bits of pruning it is too distracting, like having the radio on in the car while trying to do a difficult stretch of navigation. One of the advantages of the next door neighbours being a two minute walk down the lane is that I can listen on a proper radio, instead of earphones, which I detest wearing, and there is always a catastrophe at some point with the cord between the radio and the headphones. This does mean that bits of the garden get associated with particular events on the news, or a piece of music, or a play. I'll now be associating the middle of the long bed with the Japanese nuclear power station emergency, and the row about the possible Libyan no-fly zone. That bit of border must have a strange resonance with world events, as it is also associated with the BBC's wall to wall coverage of the death of Princess Diana.
I heard from my Japanese gardening friend, who told me that she was extremely safe, and they must now think how to help the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. I greatly admire her fortitude.
I spent most of the day digging over the area where the Hebe salicifolia used to be. This is one case where my normal no-dig policy doesn't apply, as the ground is full of hebe roots, a creeping weed grass species that's got in there, self-seeded geraniums, Muscari and other small bulbs, and the roots of the ivy hedge that surrounds the bed. The ivy is a mixed blessing. The bed when first planted didn't have a hedge, or anything else, surrounding it, but the rabbits ate so many plants I realised that wire netting was a must. This did the job of keeping the rabbits out, but looked hideous itself. The solution seemed to be to hide it inside a hedge, but I balked at the cost of buying that much box and the ongoing labour of clipping it, so I settled on ivy. The ivy was terribly slow to get going, which was partly because ivy generally takes a season to settle, and partly because the soil was so terrible that everything took a long time to start moving. It did eventually grow, and continues to do so. The downside is that it wants to run out across the surrounding soil as much as it wants to climb, and cutting back ivy running and rooting into the ground is probably as big a job as trimming a box hedge would be. The bed is long although relatively narrow, curving around the side of the drive, so although I haven't measured it (I suppose I must have done when I ordered the ivy but have since forgotten the answer) I guess it is at least 30m all the way round. That's an awful lot of cutting back, which has to be done several times a year. When clipped it looks rather fun, in a quirky way, bulging gently like a cloud-pruned hedge, and bits of it have now matured and want to flower, which adds character. In fact I like the look of it. But it is a lot of work. I smile inwardly when I hear Bunny Guinness advocating ivy on wire netting as a good narrow evergreen hedge, and wonder if she has ever tried maintaining one. The ivy roots do go out a considerable way from the hedge, and are sucking water and nutrition from the already poor soil. I dug quite a lot out to give the new planting a sporting chance. I don't want to kill the hedge, but previous attempts at eradicating ivy have made me think it doesn't give up that easily. Running roots are one drawback of hedges. Privet is the notorious species, but yew roots are dense and far-travelling too.
I often listen to the radio while gardening, especially for maintenance tasks like weeding. For setting out new planting and tricky bits of pruning it is too distracting, like having the radio on in the car while trying to do a difficult stretch of navigation. One of the advantages of the next door neighbours being a two minute walk down the lane is that I can listen on a proper radio, instead of earphones, which I detest wearing, and there is always a catastrophe at some point with the cord between the radio and the headphones. This does mean that bits of the garden get associated with particular events on the news, or a piece of music, or a play. I'll now be associating the middle of the long bed with the Japanese nuclear power station emergency, and the row about the possible Libyan no-fly zone. That bit of border must have a strange resonance with world events, as it is also associated with the BBC's wall to wall coverage of the death of Princess Diana.
I heard from my Japanese gardening friend, who told me that she was extremely safe, and they must now think how to help the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. I greatly admire her fortitude.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
hedge cutting and the uses of twigs
Today was a beautiful day for working outside. The sun shone, it wasn't raining or windy. Perfect weather, in fact, for getting things done that require a chainsaw. We took the top out of some field maples, Acer campestre, that were outgrowing their space in the boundary hedge between us and the neighbouring farm. Field maple is a beautiful plant, the leaves turning a vivid butter yellow in the autumn, but it is vigorous, wanting to make a medium sized tree if left to its own devices. The birds will be starting to think about nest sites before too long, so any hedge cutting needs to be done fairly soon.
The larger branches will be seasoned over the summer and used as firewood next winter. The smaller bits went through the shredder and will be used to mulch the paths around the compost bins. An apparently huge pile of twigs makes a very small amount of wood chippings, so we never have enough. As I shredded I thought how nowadays woody prunings are generally treated as waste, to be disposed of somehow, crammed into the family car and taken to the tip, or burnt on the bonfire, or most annoyingly dumped in farm gates and lay-bys (indeed, some wretched person has been dumping pyracantha prunings and even a piece of disgarded box topiary in the entrance to our spinney). In the past the twigs of at least some native species were useful. I was reading a gardening encyclopedia written in the middle of the last century by the wonderful Arthur Hellyer, and he describes building land drains by digging a trench (1 in 40 slope sufficient) and filling the bottom of it with bundles of hazel twigs, which will carry the water away after the trench is backfilled. It will, he says, last for many years, provided that a sufficient quantity of twigs is used. He does not elaborate on how many is sufficient. Indeed, in wet areas great medieval cathedrals such as Ely were built on rafts of twigs, and Brunel used the same method for his railways. Alder was often used, because it resists rot when wet, or hazel was pretty good.
The larger branches will be seasoned over the summer and used as firewood next winter. The smaller bits went through the shredder and will be used to mulch the paths around the compost bins. An apparently huge pile of twigs makes a very small amount of wood chippings, so we never have enough. As I shredded I thought how nowadays woody prunings are generally treated as waste, to be disposed of somehow, crammed into the family car and taken to the tip, or burnt on the bonfire, or most annoyingly dumped in farm gates and lay-bys (indeed, some wretched person has been dumping pyracantha prunings and even a piece of disgarded box topiary in the entrance to our spinney). In the past the twigs of at least some native species were useful. I was reading a gardening encyclopedia written in the middle of the last century by the wonderful Arthur Hellyer, and he describes building land drains by digging a trench (1 in 40 slope sufficient) and filling the bottom of it with bundles of hazel twigs, which will carry the water away after the trench is backfilled. It will, he says, last for many years, provided that a sufficient quantity of twigs is used. He does not elaborate on how many is sufficient. Indeed, in wet areas great medieval cathedrals such as Ely were built on rafts of twigs, and Brunel used the same method for his railways. Alder was often used, because it resists rot when wet, or hazel was pretty good.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
managing for wildlife
Our little wood was designated a site of wildlife interest last year. The consultants who surveyed the area identified it as a possible doormice corridor. I'm slightly bemused by this, not least because nobody asked us if they could come and do a doormouse survey, but it is a good little bit of woodland with a lot of wildlife and some moderately rare ground flora including opposite leaved golden saxifrage. If there are doormice as well so much the better. The Essex Wildlife Trust is keen that we sign up to manage it for wildlife, and drew up a management plan for us. Today I actually implemented part of the plan by planting some hawthorn bare root whips in a gappy bit of hedge the wildlife officer had pointed out. I put rabbit guards on them too, otherwise they wouldn't last the week. I suspect that this bit of hedge may be struggling because it is under the canopy of a large oak, looking at it again, and I might get a few hazel whips to plant behind the hedge line as well.
Part of the wood was originally managed as coppice, and the largest stools are up to 1.8m diamater, which makes them pretty old. They haven't been cut for decades, and we've agreed to let the wildlife trust's contractor cut some of them to let more light in and start introducing a more mixed age structure. Part of me worries that once wind gets into the wood it could topple the remaining trees, but without coppicing they are one by one falling over anyway. We went around with the wildife trust officer and the contractor last week, marking the trees to come down with a pot of left over red acrylic paint. By the time we'd finished we'd got paint on the contractor's waterproof jacket, the kitchen towel and the cat. The wildlife officer thought he might have a spare owl box about the place he could let us have. There are lots of tawnies but it would be wonderful to have barn owls, and it wouldn't be a bad site for them, with quite a lot of rough grass on the neighbouring farms and about as far from a dual carriageway as you can get around here. According to The Barn Owl Trust collisions with fast moving traffic is one of the leading causes of death in barn owls. Of course we could build our own box, but that might not happen any time soon, what with the great decking project and everything.
Part of the wood was originally managed as coppice, and the largest stools are up to 1.8m diamater, which makes them pretty old. They haven't been cut for decades, and we've agreed to let the wildlife trust's contractor cut some of them to let more light in and start introducing a more mixed age structure. Part of me worries that once wind gets into the wood it could topple the remaining trees, but without coppicing they are one by one falling over anyway. We went around with the wildife trust officer and the contractor last week, marking the trees to come down with a pot of left over red acrylic paint. By the time we'd finished we'd got paint on the contractor's waterproof jacket, the kitchen towel and the cat. The wildlife officer thought he might have a spare owl box about the place he could let us have. There are lots of tawnies but it would be wonderful to have barn owls, and it wouldn't be a bad site for them, with quite a lot of rough grass on the neighbouring farms and about as far from a dual carriageway as you can get around here. According to The Barn Owl Trust collisions with fast moving traffic is one of the leading causes of death in barn owls. Of course we could build our own box, but that might not happen any time soon, what with the great decking project and everything.
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