Wednesday 28 November 2012

Garden cowboys

There’s a sad and cautionary feel to the blog today, for this is the tale of men, trees and a nurtured garden who met one fateful day and didn’t get on.

There is a garden I’ve grown to know, after six years of tending the earth and plants I feel I was really starting to make a difference; and then the men turned up. I was away at the time but I knew they were coming to do the trees along the front drive, a mix of ash and sycamore between thirty and forty years old that had many limbs hanging precariously over both the drive and pavement. To be fair to them it’s a tricky site, a steep slope, crowded vegetation below and lots of ivy but little did I realise the drama that was to follow.

Earlier today I received a phone call from client to ask if I wanted any of the wood that had already been felled, during the conversation the feeling that all was not right soon began to take over. Upon further questioning I discovered that the ‘tree surgeons’ had done one day so far and were coming back to finish today but on top of this were also, to quote my client “making one hell of a mess”. It became apparent that these were not the experienced aboriculturists we’d been expecting. So after work I went to visit the garden and see what had been done so far.

Decimation. It was a wood massacre. Bits of tree lay everywhere, across beds and borders, cleaving parts of the hedge in two and just thrown into piles wherever handy regardless of whether plants were currently occupying that space or not. In one place all you could see was a mess of ivy and through that the huge bulk of two large two foot wide pieces of sycamore trunk, the last time I’d been there I know a rather beautiful holly (Ilex ‘Silver Queen’) had been growing there. It was the same all over the drive beds, plants had been trodden on, squashed, crushed, broken, smothered, etc.

The men have since 'done a runner' with the job half done.

I myself am still traumatised by it. The work I’d put in over the last six years ruined, I’m sure in a years’ time this may well have a silver lining, a chance to re-plan a difficult area and start again, but with Christmas so close and the pressure on to get all my gardens looking presentable for family visits and socialising I’d going to be hard pushed to have this area looking good again before early summer, let alone the end of next month.

Take from this what lessons you can. There are many garden jobs that people will say they can do for a quick cash in hand payout, all it takes is a van and chainsaw and you can legally call yourself a tree surgeon. It’s always worth checking for knowledge and experience, the courses and qualifications are there for a reason.

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