Hedging my bets

I am in the middle of getting rid of our front hedge. It was a nice enough hedge - Lonicera nitida, which is a reasonable hedging shrub, quite dense and the bees love the tiny flowers. But two winters of snow had battered it down until it was wider than it was tall, and taking up about six feet of the front border.

So it had to go. And obviously it had to be replaced by a native hedge.

Hedging plants were ordered from the wonderful Habitat Aid - their 'Conservation Hedge mix', 50% hawthorn and 50% from a list of other natives, including blackthorn, spindle, field maple and dogwood. And best of all, part of the money I paid goes to The National Hedgelaying Society.

But before any plants can go in, the Lonicera hedge had to come down. Easier said than done - it was a pretty dense hedge, made up of many thin but liana-like stems. A borrowed chainsaw helped, and the sterling efforts of my father-in-law. Oh, and Number 2 Son helped, too, briefly.

The issue then was - what to do with all the brash generated? There seems to be a natural law in the garden; anything you have paid good money for - bark chip, gravel, compost - disappears rapidly as soon as you start to use it. Conversely, anything you don't want - weeds, sub-soil, grass clippings - will expand exponentially as soon as you look at it.

The same applies to brash (twigs and stuff to the uninitiated). Thanks to the kindness of Volunteer Mike, I had an electric chipper, which worked brilliantly with anything stiff and straight enough to feed in. Sadly, most of the Lonicera stems were very flexible, with lots of side shoots. Feeding them into the chipper was like trying to impregnate a cow with boiled spaghetti, if you've ever tried that.

So there had to be fire. I don't need much of an excuse. The good Dr Alton bought me one of those bins with holes in and a lid, and I generated what my mother would call a right puther. ['Puther' is a word I have never heard from anyone but my mother, and it may be unique to her. It means 'a lot of smoke'.]

This was very early in the process; later, I had to go and hide indoors in case the neighbours came and shouted at me. The wind was a little... unpredictable.

Anyway, between the chipper and the fire, the majority of the hedge has now gone. All that remain are some rather stubborn roots - too big to chip, too damp to burn. But their time will come, oh yes...

Next time: I get weaving.

Birds of a Feather

To London on Wednesday, for a meeting of the rather wonderful Wildlife Gardening Forum. This was my second meeting, the first being at Wisley last year, and I have to say they really are useful.

The presentations this time were especially good, focusing on a particularly important aspect of the whole wildlife gardening ethos - the need for hard evidence.

There has always been an acceptance, at least within the 'business', that gardening for wildlife is a 'good thing'. But bearing in mind the resistance of some sectors of the population to the idea of a bit of untidiness or - perish the thought - the presence of weeds in the garden, it would be great to be able to quantify that 'good thing' with some proper science.

Thankfully, that seems to be happening. The culmination of the meeting was the launch of 'Wildlife of a Garden: A Thirty-Year Study', a book by Jennifer Owen, who has catalogued the flora and fauna of her small Leicestershire garden for, as the title suggests, the last 30 years. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice it to say the range of organisms she has recorded is staggering, including some new not only to the UK but to science. And the crucial point is that she has never gone out of her way to garden for the benefit of wildlife.

That was the culmination of the meeting, but earlier talks were just as important. Hard evidence from the BTO demonstrated that a whole range of scarce bird species move into gardens from the wider countryside when times are hard; a detailed survey by Pond Conservation showed that, area for area, good quality garden ponds are as species-rich as those in the countryside, but probably more abundant; and after a presentation by Jan Miller of Saith Ffynnon Wildlife Plants I will be thinking more about the recreation of 'brownfield' habitats in a garden context.

All in all, a thoroughly useful day, and graced by the presence of both Chris Baines and Sarah Raven, which sent my fan-boy heart a-racing...

Wildflower ID Course

Great first session of this year's wildflower course - perfect venue, enthusiastic participants, tea and biccies... and I get paid to waffle on about something I enjoy.

What's not to like?

Down on Jimmy's Farm

Had a great tour round Jimmy Doherty's pig farm near Ipswich today, with farm manager Nathan, a man of boundless enthusiasm. Spoke of many possible projects, from meadow creation to biomass. All very exciting.

I hope it is the beginning of a fruitful association.