Well it is now almost three months since moving in, and still most of my things are in boxes stacked in the hallway.
With a few days off work and finally some time to start on the most urgent jobs I’ve decided to tackle the overgrown garden hedge.
The hedge, like the rest of the garden, was already massively overgrown when we moved in, but tackling it meant saving to get a hedge cutter. No way I was going to do this one by hand.
With a hedge trimmer I’m glad to say it really wasn’t too bad a job. The hardest part was reaching the top, so for that I used a ladder and slowly inched it along bit by bit.
The important thing is in trimming a hedge to taper it slightly, so it is wider at the base and narrower at the top. That lets the sunlight reach the whole hedge so it is nice and even.
Being brutal was hard. I’ve had to really take it back quite a long way because it had just grown too much. Unfortunately that means there are now lots of bare patches. Will it regrow? Time will tell. Ideally I would have done this earlier in August so there was time for new leaves to develop before winter.
On cutting the hedge I discovered some large bare patches filled with ivy and other creepers. I suspect the growth of these is blocking the sun to parts of the hedge and stopping it growing in places – so the ivy had to go.
Overall, I’m very pleased with the results.
Before:
And After
