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 A New Yew Hedge

The bright orange colour of a hedge in serious trouble.

This hedge used to be the southern boundary of the the main rose beds. It delineated the more formal part of the garden from the wilder orchard, at one end, and the return leg of our tour back from the vegetable garden at the other. After sustaining serious damage due to wind scorch and flooding in 2000, 85% of the hedge died and had to be removed.

Work started in early February 2001 and took place between bouts of flooding. (L) Cutting starts.( C) Halfway there. (R) A view from the other end. The last part of the hedge is about to get the chop. 

(L) The hedge completely gone and all the debris removed. (The new rose bed is in the foreground). (C) A stump grinder makes short work of the roots. (R) Now that the hedge has been cleared, a completely new vista has opened up.

A replacement hedge is ready to be re-planted but there is still more work to be done to shore up the bank and level the site. A line of 500 X 6' posts are needed to stabilize the stream bank. Here the work to put them in gets underway. 

Having nearly completed the task of revetting the stream, (and after three weeks of exceptionally hard work), the job was halted. It had been discovered that we were the proud owners of, nationally rare, water voles.( So rare in fact, that in the twenty years that I have been the gardener here, I have never actually seen one here). The posts shoring up the bank had to be removed and the stream bank had to be returned to how it used to be. After all the posts were taken out, the site was levelled off and the bank graded down to a gentle slope. Turf was then used to grass over where the hedge used to be.

The posts have thankfully found new homes with a fencing contractor and the new yew hedge has now found a home on a National Trust property near Brighton.

 A further update will be added as soon as the latest photographs are back from the developers. 

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