Making the hedge breathe

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been out with the Stroud Valleys Project gang, and it was nice to meet up at Fromebridge again for some hedge maintenance. This particular hedge was planted in 2023, and gets a lot of love (see here and here for just two examples).

Today was more of a tidy up to keep the driveway to the pub looking nice. The grass was covering the plants completely, so armed with shears, we carefully clipped in between and around. The material will provide extra mulch and the plants certainly have more room to breathe and less competition now.

We also headed over to the roundabout to do the same thing to some standing trees planted there last year also.

The grassland on the roundabout is pretty nice – plenty of ox-eye daisy, red clover and common vetch. Will be nice if highways let this go to seed before they cut this year.

It was also pleasing to see that the hedge at the top part of the driveway has also taken very well. We were a bit sceptical when planting because the spades wouldn’t go in more than 3 inches before they hit concrete. But plants have a habit of finding their own way and that will be a nice thick end at that end in the future.

Overall, we were pretty happy that the failure rate was very low. Literally a handful in the whole hedge line. So we all definitely look forward to coming back in 8 years or so for the hedge laying.