Another Late Holly Chop

I thought we were late doing the annual holly chop last year, but this year we are even later!

Winter is the correct time to cut a holly hedge, but as I’ve mentioned before we have to wait for the perennials growing under the holly to die back. This has been getting later and later over the last few years with such mild autumns.

Luckily we had a very hard frost in mid December which did for all the remaining perennials, that were doggedly hanging on.

Unfortunately due to other commitments we weren’t able to get it done before Christmas, which would have been ideal.

Then the weather hasn’t been fit, with some of the longest lasting snow we’ve had in years. It was pretty though!

And so here we are at the end of January and it was getting desperate as the bulbs are well on the way. With some snowdrops already flowering!

Luckily though last week the weather suddenly turned mild, so we knew there was only one job to do at the weekend! The holly hedge had to be chopped!

Re-barking the Border

The borders only get re-barked every other year, or sometimes slightly longer depending on whether its rotted down, or if I’ve been moving lots of plants around! Something us gardeners can’t resist!!

Fortunately this is the year it needs replacing, so I was able to pile the back chipping’s up around the bulbs before we got started. I didn’t want to bark the whole border as I didn’t want it all compressing.

You may think, “why don’t you just look where your putting your feet?” But we have to put a tarpaulin down, or else we’d never get all the holly cuttings up. And gardening with holly clippings isn’t much fun. Have you ever been pricked by holly? Well, trust me, it makes you shout!

Anyway my bark trick worked and the bulbs just looked a little squashed, rather than completely trampled! They are by and large, hardier than they look.

Let the Chopping Commence!

There was much more growth on the holly this year than usual. We put it down to ‘all that rain’! After the summer heatwave, I’ll bet the holly thought, “right, I’m drinking every drop of this”!

We start at the end of the hedge, down in the ‘white garden’. Mainly because this is where the first bulbs come up, the ‘white’ snowdrops.

With just a small amount of the 80ft long hedge cut, we’d managed to fill two builders dumpy bags already!

Squashing the holly down in the bags meant we only filled a third bag, before the white garden was finished. It was then time for a trip to the recycling centre, and home for a very late lunch!

The next morning we carried on down the side of the (still not finished) summerhouse. This is the easiest bit of the lot as it’s paved. Oh how we wish we’d put a path down the length of the hedge!

Whilst we have the platform up, we give the three red trees – ‘Prunus cerasifera Pissardii Nigra’ – to give them their full title, their annual trim. This keeps them compact with a nice dense canopy.

Some of the new growths on them are over six foot long.

Great excitement in the middle tree, we found our first little birds nest. I’m not sure which bird built it but it’s so tiny I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it was a Wren’s nest. We do have a number of them around so hopefully.

It doesn’t seem like 5 minutes since we planted those trees and they were so wispy that they wouldn’t have even supported a little Wren. That’s now nine years ago, how time flies!

The birds now absolutely love the trees, dashing in and out. What a thrill that the first babies have now been born in one!

And so we reached the bamboo bed, always a happy sight! Not that we don’t enjoy being outside in the winter, but it is a bit of a prickly job!

It’s now late in the afternoon and we’re off for our final trip to the recycling centre. It’s nearly dark by the time we get there, and I’m sure our holly is the last garden waste of the day to be going into the vast skip.

Inside the first chilli seeds are germinating, and outside we’ve tackled the first proper gardening job of the year. And so it all starts again, how reassuring!

Stay safe & happy gardening.