Sweet summer delights in the garden

THE OTHER day I was trimming back a hedge that had grown unruly and was creating too much shade over part of my garden. It was a boundary hedge of native trees and plants and I would guess it was at least a couple of hundred years old so I was trying to treat it with some respect.

I worked my way along slowly, using hand tools, mainly a bushman saw and a pair of secateurs. I was making no attempt to create a laid hedge, although these have come back into fashion in recent years. I don’t see the point in them. The amount of labour required is not justified in this day and age when hedges can easily be made stock proof with some form of wire. And personally I think laid hedges are rather ugly and unnatural.

I find this work oddly satisfying — provided, of course, you protect yourself properly from briars and thorns. It’s not a job for which you wear a short-sleeved shirt. My hedge included blackthorn and whitethorn, lots of brambles and quite a few wild roses — all prickly stuff.