The tall hedges were a mess, backed by overgrown Philadelphus which had pushed the box plants in search of light, till the back of one of the hedges was lying at an angle and almost completely bare. The fronts were gappy and ragged, and the whole appearance was that of a failed formal feature which was labouring under the burden of its own weight. I had to cut the front back gradually, and encourage new growth behind. The first task to achieve this was to drastically reduce the Philadelphus to let light in, and then to keep them pruned to prevent a repeat of the problem. We started off with a scene like this, after pruning -
It is difficult to see how the back edge slopes here, but we are talking about an angle of about 60 degrees to the horizontal instead of 90. Note also the obelisks at the end, which are leaning sickly and grossly undersized for the dimensions of the hedge, which, unusually for a box feature, stood at about five feet high. We can see the scale of the problem in the next picture, where the bottom end of the walk is completely dominated by an enormous Russian Vine, which kept much of the afternoon sun from the hedge beneath. It also had almost killed the two yew trees which supported it and it harboured rabbits at its base. One barely surviving tree still poked a single branch out to the sunlight and raised a defiant finger at the Russian Vine, but it was hardly a specimen any more. Advice about this vigorous climber, otherwise known as the Mile-a-minute Plant? Steer clear. Don't believe the idiots who recommend it to cover unsightliness in your garden quickly. It is never a better option than a combination of a superior plant and patience. Remember, once upon a time it had been classified as a close relative of the Japanese Knotweed, and renaming it hadn't changed any of its less desirable properties. A Polygonum by the name of Fallopia is still the biggest weed in your garden and needs the services of a committed arsonist to make the best of it.
The extent of the lean and the curvature inwards to the bottom of the hedge can be seen in the following photograph, even after four years of work. It's a long haul, if you approach your restoration gently and unobtrusively. I suppose we could have dug it all out and replanted, but that's not my way. Feeding and pruning over a protracted period would achieve my goal. I was convinced of that. Besides, I had no budget.
Five years further down the line, nine years after the work started, it was looking more like this, in a muted autumn shot -
At last it was starting to look like I had envisaged it. The bottoms had been allowed to grow out, while the tops had been cut back hard. In so doing the plants had become more robust, holding together better and not tending to flop, unless under the pressure of teenage residents jumping through them. Also there was now a crisp edge to the join where the top and sides met. All this would be subject to further improvement over the next few years, but I have no further pictorial evidence of this. The two obelisks in the foreground had been little more than pimples on top of a too-large hedge when I started the work, and I had gradually increased their height so the proportions worked better. The problem of the mismatch between the topiary features which terminated most of the hedges and the hedges themselves extended to every single example, whether in box, yew or even beech, as the picture below shows, in which I, having aged considerably in my first ten years on the job, am to be seen in winter reducing the height of the hedge with loppers to make it sit better against the obelisks. In some cases it was necessary to let the topiary grow to balance the hedge, and sometimes the hedge needed to be cut down where it had become too tall for the end feature.
Tomorrow I will tell you how to achieve that perfect sharp corner on your hedges and address the restoration of the orchard in the context of the whole-garden philosophy. See you then! Or on second thoughts, I may delay just one more day.....
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