The Hedge

[charlie]

Shame I couldn't add scary music to the title! This is my worst job of the year, cutting our boundary hedge, Laurel. We vowed never to have laurel again after our first house, but when we arrived we had this monster and because at the time it was the only shelter for our otherwise very exposed garden we kept it, 150 feet long, the inside edge and top are coped with with a short ladder and a bit of stretching. Although you can use hedge cutters secateurs do a better job

006 by charliepridham, on Flickr
Its coping with the mountain of material that comes off, poor shredder works overtime.
Then the worst bit, my garden is well above road level so the outside edge starts 8 feet above ground level

004 by charliepridham, on Flickr

So what are the jobs you dread in the garden?

[Keith]

We have the same but on both sides of the garden. Cut the East side earlier this year, need to do the other side, which means going into the woods. The West hedge has to be done as it's getting too high. At least with Laurel you can cut it back hard.

[Chrisg]

That is some hedge.

Nothing like here, my worst job is simply picking leaves out of the centre of the agaves. More painful than anything else.

[kGarden]

Shame I couldn't add scary music to the title! ... the inside edge and top are coped with with a short ladder and a bit of stretching

Could you convert the internal path to a "one-sided Allee"? I'm thinking of the one at Château de la Ballue (which might be Portuguese Laurel??)



http://www.maison.com/jardin/jardins-vi ... rie/31596/

[charlie]

Although the wall side is north facing I still try and grow a large range of climbers on it, partly due to lack of other suitable walls and partly to see whether some plants will cope with a lot of shade and very poor growing conditions, so I reluctantly put up with hedge cutting.

I couldn't really see from the picture what a "one-sided Allee" is? but if you meant just let it grow up, I can see some advantages as it would shelter me more from the north, but any extension in height would be difficult to cope with on the outboard side as it is not allowed to overhang the wall (Even though its above head height!) so even an extra 4 feet would put the person doing the hedge cutting uncomfortably high