Six on Saturday: In One Fell Swoop…

… the character of the woodland has been destroyed…

Our neighbour on the hedge side came to the door a week or so ago to say they were planning on replacing part of the hedge at the bottom end of their garden, where it was very thin and scraggy, with three fence panels. Admittedly it has looked thinner and scraggier since we cut back some of the holly and ivy on our side to create the ‘path less travelled’ a year or so ago, which wouldn’t have affected them in any way as it was tucked behind a shed and  disused greenhouse, but they felt it allowed their dog to escape into our garden and wanted to make it more secure – and they have also always been an exceedingly private family.

The age of our properties has meant responsibilty for the boundaries was not definitive, but our neighbours believe their deeds suggested it was theirs, so we couldn’t really insist the hedge was left as it was. We have since found out from their landscape contracters that there were to be five panels, not just three, and we were certainly not anticipating the towering monstrosity that began appearing yesterday – six feet of panel and gravel board above a drop of more than a foot makes for a very dominant boundary, reinforced by the garish orange stain and glaringly white concrete posts and gravel boards…the very antithesis of the dark green natural boundary it has replaced…

Hey ho… we are trying to be philosophical about it, walking down the garden periodically to have another look, trying to imagine how different it might be in other seasons, when there were more leaves on the trees, and pondering how to make the best of the situation. On other boundaries, admittedly, we might have welcomed this outcome, as we did when another neighbour replaced their leylandii conifers with a fence, although we have still toned down the colour of their panels (which we could still do here of course), and in time holly and ivy will recolonise the boundary – but not soon enough! In the short term camouflague netting might be a useful remedy, but would it prove to be a bit ‘naff’?

The one redeeming factor in all this is that replacing this section of hedge in this way is nowhere near  as detrimental as having another property built in our neighbours’ garden, on the boundary, as was the plan until recently…

But let’s move onto other and more pretty things this Saturday, like one of the many hellebores which are now brightening up the garden and enjoying the sunshine we have been blessed with for much of this week (for some reason it seems to be missing a label, perhaps buried under a recent mulch of compost):

They certainly add colour to the carpet of white in the woodland edge border, which I was admiring today whilst realising I have not begun splitting any snowdrop clumps, a task I usually attend to as soon as they start emerging. Plenty of time for that though!

Down in the working greenhouse there is a pretty array of young grasses, a recent purchase partly to fulfil my plan of replanting one of the bold borders with grasses. Bought through eBay, the purchase was impeccable in every respect – great communication and personal attention, great packaging and great plants – and at a great price too!

Also in the greenhouse is evidence that my 2022 seed sowig is well under way, with newly germinated seedlings, fresh from their warm spot in the house, next to the first batch of January sown seedlings now pricked out:

I have hitherto not been brilliant at keeping up with feeding regimes in the garden, starting well but becomingly increasigly lax, and am hoping to remedy this by the use of post-it note reminders in the garden diary I now keep (with brief information about garden tasks, flowering highlights and the weather). Today the clematis have all been treated to bonemeal and slow release fertiliser, topped off by a final pruning of the group 3 varieties. Most were showing very few new shoots yet, but ‘Margot Koster’ (below) very obligingly had a good crop of healthy shoots low down, perfectly placed for accurate pruning:

With the first ‘Tête-à-tête’ beginning to open, the advent of spring comes tantalisingly nearer, and I am sure other contributors to Jon the Propagator’s Saturday meme will be seeing evidence of this too – why not check them out?