Goodbye tree, you just got too big - laurels you are just messy!

We have now been at Totternhoe for over two years and we are finally managing to look at what we might do with the garden. Something that has been casting a shadow over part of the garden has been this huge evergreen. It was probably quite happy in its early days as a little tree in the 1970s but not being cut back over the years has meant that it has become rather a giant.

Along with the vast evergreen is a laurel hedge, it grows about a foot every three months and hangs over our neighbour's path and cuts a lot of light from the boggy area just behind the bungalow. I kind of like the greenness of it but we decided that since it is such a pain getting rid of the cuttings the whole thing would go and we would start again. The deed is now done and while it looks a bit bare, once the fence is repaired I know I will get used to it and have some ideas for other plants that will be slower growing and less invasive to put in the gap.

There was one bonus, although these will need to season for another year before we can burn them.

Last week saw four hours of digging to remove a dead hedge higher up the garden, the soil is fine so hopefully the demise of the previous plants was down to old age and disliking chalky soil rather than anything else. In its place and awaiting a mulch is a line of fruit bushes, gooseberry, blackcurrant, blueberry, lingonberry, raspberry and a few june berry (AMELANCHIER LAMARCKII) thrown in for good measure. Doesn't look very promising at the moment but I'm confident that 2016 will see it flourish, so watch this space. Big shout out to Buckinghamshire Nurseries who have a brilliant range of bare rooted fruit bushes that make this quite affordable.