It has finally happened. I have tackled the pyracantha menace. It was a long time coming ...
When I had first bought the Little House I was particularly excited about the garden - I had never had one, but had read loads of gardening books by Beverley Nichols. I was dying to try out all his ideas!
It was a particularly tragic chapter in a gardening life dominated by pain and rejection. To summarise, my neighbours all loved tall trees with dense foliage, and nothing grew in my garden. I spent thousands of pounds on it, but everything died.
The only plants that didn't die were ivy, ferns, and pyracantha bushes. So that's what I planted. They didn't grow all that well, but they survived, and provided a little green colour in the unremitting gloom on the forest floor that was my garden.
Then the incredible happened - my neighbours started to cut down their trees! Sunlight entered my garden. And the hitherto subdued pyracanthas thrived and reached for the sky. Every year they grew taller and wider. I tried to cut them back a bit, but they have up to 4 inch long spines, and my compost heap was small.
I extended the compost heap, by digging two feet into the ground and making it 2 meters long and wide, but it still wasn't large enough to accommodate all the foliage that I needed to cut down in my garden.
For years I let things slide, indulging in massive, futile, slashing orgies once or twice a year, compost heap space permitting. Things came to a crisis this year, because I had not been able to do much last year, on account of being unwell. The pyracanthas completely dominated the garden, strangling the damson tree, the apple tree, and even the birch. The neighbour's honeysuckle had inserted itself into the pyracantha hedge, and connected, by means of its endlessly long vines, the birch, the damson tree, and the apple tree with the pyracantha hedge. The resulting matted mess was impenetrable, and pigeons used it for immoral purposes. I harvested neither damsons not apples, and the birch looked increasingly aggrieved. Things had to change!
So at the start of May, emboldened by the three day Bank Holiday weekend that lay before me, I donned my Japanese working skirt, turtleneck, and fleece jacket, and ventured into the wilderness, armed with shears, a small saw, and a side cutter (usually used to cut electric wires, but pressed into service, since I own no secateurs).
I started systematically at one end of the hedge, and sawed off the large trunks. Then I wildly brandished my long handled shears, to frighten off the wildlife that was caught up in the trunk, and cut through any branches and honey suckle and ivy shoots that connected the hedge to the severed trunk. Then I threw the trunk into one of the two open areas in the garden, and steeled myself to cut the next one.
This activity took up most of the Bank Holiday weekend, and every evening of the week that followed. Finally I was done!
Now the real work started. All the cut branches taken together came to about 5 cubic meter - to compost them I would have had to turn half the garden into one vast compost heap. But there was another option - an incredibly labour intensive option. Obviously I took it.
I processed every cut branch individually. First I sawed off the really big side branches. Then I clipped off the smaller branches. Then I cut the smallest branches into 4 inch long pieces, and added them onto the compost heap. From the medium sized branches I cut the smallest twigs, which againI cut into small pieces and added to the compost heap. The longer branches I denuded off their leaves, which I added to the compost heap. Then I took the side cutter, and snipped off every single thorn and spike. The medium sized branch, now innocent of all leaves and thorns, I piled against the garden fence. The large branches/trunks I treated in a similar way, and piled up in another place.
All this took over two weeks, including two long weekends (I had added some annual leave to the Bank Holidays) and every evening (about three hours every day after I had finished the office work).
I cannot exaggerate how proud I am of myself!!!!! I spent approximately 60 hours (sixty!!!) snipping thorns off pyracantha branches - who does that? A lesser DB would have ordered a large container and had the lot hauled off to the city dump. But I am made of sterner stuff!!!!
Anyway. Last Sunday by midday I had completed my labours. I now had a high compost heap (about 2 cubic meters), a large pile of medium sized branches and twigs, and another large piles of large branches and trunks.
At the bottom of my garden is 2 meter high brick boundary wall. Almost half of it is taken up by the compost heap. The other half was populated by various oddments of garden rubbish.
I cleared the garden rubbish, and then constructed a Dead Wood Hedge Thingy.
My thinking was, since I had destroyed all those pricker bushes, which had served the local wildlife as shelter and a source of nourishment (mind you,I found no bird nests in my cuttings), I determined to make amends.
I rammed several poles and branches one foot away from the wall into the ground, parallel to the wall. Into the gap between the wall and the poles I stashed my twigs, branches, and trunks, carefully leaving little gaps, to accommodate hibernating amphibians and nesting birds.
At one end,where the wall meets the fence,I incorporated my old bird-feeder, as a particularly luxurious nesting opportunity. I closed off two of the openings, and surrounded it by a few pyracantha branches that had retained their thorns, stacked too close for large birds like magpies, but not too close for little birds like robins and wrens.
There is a huge canopy of ivy on the wall, so hopefully it will soon disguise both the compost heap and the dead wood hedge.
I am typing this seated on my garden bench, pleased with my labours, and mulling over plans of how to repopulate the now strangely empty garden. I want to plant flowers, and maybe some fruit bushes like currants - after all these decades of gloom I crave some colour. Besides,the pyracanthas did provide blossoms for the bees, and berries for the bird, so I will needs to offset the loss of all the cut down bushes.
Just in case you wonder, I have retained two pyracanthas. The one in front of the kitchen window, that shields the garden bench, and one especially tall one next to the birch tree. I cut back of the other stems, and only retained the tallest, which reaches for the sky and looks like a tree, with a bare trunk and a canopy. It looks a little off, but I need it for the washing line.
I add lots of photos below, to illustrate my writing. I wish I had a polarising filter, thelight is never so cold as in the photos, and the garden, while bare, really does look very nice and inviting in the sunshine.
I am very pleased to be sitting here on my bench!
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| After the slaughter |
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| Pyracantha tree |
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| Bottom of pyracantha tree -I have since cut back the non-tree branches |
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| Big branches |
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| Bare wall, to soon host the dead wood hedge |
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| Compost heap |
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| Small and medium sized branches, sans thorns |
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| I am watering the compost heap to encourage swift processing of clippings |
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| The dead wood hedge |
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| Covered compost heap, Christmas Tree, and dead wood hedge |
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| Still quite a lot of foliage left! |
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| View from the garden bench |
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| Pond with fountain |
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| Those pots contain seeds - hope they will come up! |
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| A peaceful nook in the garden |
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| Luxurious bird bath, 60cm across and filled with pebbles to varying heights, to accommodate different sized birds. The lupin flower is the only one so far, I bought some plants in |
