A few random snippets

Brief sojourn in Bristol

There is certainly no stopping a bramble… This one has grown up through the hollow post of a fence in Stoke Park in Bristol – where these goats are also happily roaming free and munching whatever, including the brambles, comes their way.

Back in Hampstead Lane

Back in the Hampstead Lane garden the geranium Rozannes have gone completely mad – their lovely cornflower blue flowers threading their way up through the roses, the cotinus, the fennel and completely drowning the poor young corkscrew hazel tree – although the little acer with its glorious orange flushed new leaves seems to be holding its own.

Meanwhile the fennel and cotinus have set up a happy partnership, the delicate tiny lime green flowers of the fennel showing up well against the velvety deep maroon of the cotinus leaves.

And the apricot rose, whose name I fear I have forgotten, has had a super enthusiastic second flowering. Each of its head-high new branches must be carrying 12 to 15 blooms all glowing a rich yellow gold in the evening sun.

And finally my much treasured cardoon, which has produced three spiky mauve blossoms which the bees (are they bees? they look a bit small) are thoroughly enjoying.

Heather on the heath

On the heath we have been busy too, one of our most satisfying recent tasks being to ‘reveal’ the heather dell. This is quite a large shallow meadow area between the Hill Garden and Golders Hill Park. It is fairly closely covered by heather but when we arrived a couple of weeks ago you would never have known it as the whole area was entirely overgrown with bracken, rosebay willow herb and brambles. Fortunately we were a large group of Heath Handers and on day one we managed to clear the central area of all three and reveal the heather.

However the poor old heather was not just struggling with brambles, bracken and willow herb, but was being deprived of sun by half a dozen Scots pines lowering over it. So on day two we were let loose with this amazing long saw. This is a lethal super sharp toothed scimitar shaped blade attached to the end of a 4.5 metre extendable aluminium pole. With it you can cut off overhanging branches thus dramatically raising the canopy and letting the light in.

However, this is not as easy as it sounds.

Even though it is aluminium, 4.5 metres of pole is heavy and it took two of us to lift it up to branch level. At that point you need to rest it on a branch then move it approximately a metre down the branch you want to cut off. Because the branch is heavy, if you cut it close to the trunk the weight may well make it split off from the trunk before you have sawed through and damage the trunk by tearing both off bark and wood in its fall. But if you cut a bit down the branch the weight of the branch may cause it to tear the branch before you have cut through it – but it doesn’t matter as it is only damaging the branch that is coming off anyhow. You can then move your saw right up against the trunk and neatly saw off the small rump of the branch causing minimum damage to the trunk.

However, you need to keep the blade straight as it is quite thin and will snap if you allow it to twist. You also need to saw gently and smoothly allowing the saw to do most of the work – and hope that there isn’t too much sap rising in the branch as that makes it very hard to get through. And… you need to position your saw so that when it does cut through the branch the saw itself is supported on another branch as if it were to drop you would not be able to hold it and the blade would snap as it hit the ground – quite apart from taking out anyone who was foolish enough to be in the vicinity!

It was very satisfying though – and the heather was very happy!