A Gardener’s Weather Diary
2. Cutting back
So now the project is underway. After a few odd days cutting back overgrown ivy, garrya and clematis from the old trellis it’s now reached the point of no return.This is how the cutting back went on day one. Not much done and still lots of rubbish to get rid of.
Gradually over the last few weeks the trellis work has been cleared of years’ of unpruned growth. It’s amazing what ivy can get a root into as they managed to grow into the concrete walls supporting the trellis.
After each cutting back session there was an equally long tidying up exercise, chopping up the prunings in order for them to be composted into our green waste bin collection. Each fortnight for the last few collections our green bin has been full to capacity.
The plan is to save our wisteria which after many flowerless years now flowers each year. We think this would look attractive growing over or attached to our new summer house.
The photograph opposite shows our wisteria in flower and it also shows the full amount of growth on the trellis. The difficulty was sorting out wisteria stems from all the other stems which are interwoven around one another. I think I’ve just about managed to save our wisteria from the green bin.
The root of the wisteria may be one of the control points governing the size of our new summer house. At the moment I’m thinking we can accommodate a 7’ x 7’ or 2.1m x 2.1m summerhouse.
This afternoon the last piece of trellis to be freed of vegetation was tackled. Our green bin is already full so after a hectic session cutting down the trellis and removing all the vegetation, the secateurs and loppers were kept busy cutting up the waste material so it would fit into bags to be transported to the local tip.
There now appears to be a big hole in our garden as the trellis which acted as a screen hiding the top garden is no longer. As I said earlier the point of no return has been passed.
The garden looks very different now that the old arbour has mostly been taken down. Much of the garden is in a mess littered with debris from the dismantled trellis work. The birds must be wondering what’s happened to many of their favourite perching spots. Fortunately there were surprisingly few old nests in the dense tangle of vegetation.
The Project
Pond Filter & Weather Station