So I cheated with my first blog and reused an article I wrote back in 2016 on my first (now defunct) blog, just to get started here.

But now I want to talk (write) about looking after the trees in your garden. We use a Milton Keynes tree surgeon called Gaz for all our tree work and he’s great at doing an annual inspection and advising us on the best course of action to look after our precious “big plants” as we call them.

This year we’ve had quite a lot of tree work done in the garden. We have a lot of space so a lot of trees and one thing we had to tackle was leyland cypress removal. Boy do they grow – and not only upwards but outwards too, darkening the garden and stopping the growth of many of our precious plants. These specimens were grown into a hedge, presumably originally planted because they grew fast and quickly provided a barrier. But therein lies the problem. These monsters cast shade and make everything dark, taking the goodness and light from everything around. So they had to go so Gaz and his team tackled them for us.

It took a whole day to remove those monsters but it certainly pays to use qualified tree surgeons because they know what they’re doing and get the job done efficiently. We had a 10 foot hedge and about 8 other specimens. First a “tree monkey” climbed up the tree and cut off the top branches. Then when there was just a trunk left they cut that down at the bottom, just leaving the stump. The wood can’t be used for anything apparently, so they chip it and send it off for biofuel. The other option is to burn it in situ but that can cause horrendous ash, as we discovered before when we tried that option! Our poor neighbour took the brunt of it and much of his property and cars ended up covered in white.

Of course, if you want to have a specimen tree and have tons of room, a leyland cypress might be a great choice, though I understand that no-one really knows how big these hybrids can eventually grow and whether they become unstable after a number of years. I think ours were over 30 years old and huge, so goodness knows what they’d be like after 100 years.