Hedge scalping 1: Know thine enemy

We meet again, my old adversary...

An 8m long wall of privet & cherry laurel runs along the South West wall of the garden. It's great for privacy, for both us & the nesting birds who love it so much. But left to its own devices it would blot out the sun.

Like this, only so thick you can't see through it... (pic from www.springreachnursery.co.uk)

The hedge was big when we moved in & as it's on the bit of land the Council mow, we thought they'd clip it. We thunk wrong, & it grew & it grew & it grew... until it reached the gutters. It was time to take drastic action.

My hubby is a little phobic of the snips, convinced that pruning = killing. & with good reason - we've had a few disasters & near misses is the past ("oh, that rose is meant to be that tall...") But I was pretty confident the privet & laurel would bounce back after a haircut. I mean, I've seen some pretty brutal hatchet jobs inflicted on privet, but I've never seen a dead one.

As ever, my pruning schedule is entirely driven by when I can be arsed. That said, the hedge gets special considerations cos of its residents:

1. Have all the birds flown?
   Some of 'em raise two broods each year so it pays to let it slide a bit.
2. Is it too waspy?
   This isn't for their safety but for mine: atop a step ladder, with shears, feyly, frantically, wafting at jaspers...? yeah, I don't want to become just another ROSPA stat.

Cherry Laurel in flower (pic from www.sciencephoto.com)

I try to get the hedge done before the laurel's berries have ripened. I've wussed out a couple of years in the past & my punishment is laurel seedlings in other parts of the garden. Great. More invasive brutes. Just what I need.

In previous years I've done the big hedge hack completely by hand, with shears, loppers & saw. This too is why the job is mammoth: it takes two days of exhausting chopping, followed by several more to gather, dismember & dispose of the offcuts. I thought gardening was meant to be about genteel pottering; this is more akin to the ethnic cleansing of Rhododendrons off the face of Snowdon.

So the hedge stands there, glowering. If I do any other garden job when its trim is overdue, I get a nagging, guilty feeling... cos I should be cutting the hedge.

It mocks me.

Time, I think, for a new strategy...

(to be continued...)