Future Barrier

The saga of our hedgerow continues: we're trying to rejuvenate the ancient growth and to restrain the recently (within five years) planted hazel, mixing in ancient woodland and hedgerow plants.

The new hedge whips arrived a few days ago and we spent the best part of a day planting them, fifty new hedge plants.  There are about fifteen varieties, some of them very thorny, like this Sweet Briar (we think – it all got a bit confusing) at one end, able to grow up under the ancient Field Maple.  I bought rough leather gardening gloves with which to handle them but I still had to be careful to avoid drawing blood.

Now to protect them against rodents, rabbits, badgers, hedgehogs, passing horses or youths with too much time on their hands :-)  We also have to ensure that the local farmer, who is paid to trim the hedges around here with a murderous tractor-mounted mowing device, doesn't do anything for a few years.