In retrospect, perhaps February’s working party was a bit of a challenging job. We hoped to root out a large patch of brambles, the first along the ancient avenue of lime trees leading towards the house. Through a combination of limited resources and tools that were less than ideal, we struggled to meet the target we’d set for ourselves. The poor ground conditions, clinging wet mud, and rain hardly helped matters.

We did manage to complete a significant part of the work on the day, but had to admit defeat when the rain began in earnest later on. Fortunately, a few volunteers were able to donate more of their time a couple of weeks later to complete the job.    

Now the two recently replanted trees on the avenue are better revealed, and there’s a definite improvement in the open character between the main drive and the open lawns leading to the house. It’s our hope that, having taken the brambles out by the root, we’ll have a much better chance of them not returning with such vigour this year.

Whilst this will stem the encroachment of only a small part of the avenue, we’ll be unable to continue this work during bird nesting season. This will also give us time to rethink how we approach the job.