Fir Tree Area

Behind the boat area/herb garden, we have another semi-planted area. Firstly, we have a fabulous Cordyline, which is a big impact plant. It’s quite impressive, and I love it’s foliage. I’m a big fan of foliage and often prefer it to flowers. 

Apologies for the picture of the garden wheelie bin. It's full of old bits of the cordyline though, so at least it's relevant.

Secondly, there is what I originally deemed the ‘monster plant’, because we didn’t know what it was and it looked weird. I think my mother-in-law eventually worked it out, but I honestly can’t remember what it is. The leaves are similar to elephant ears, and it has little sprays of prink flowers and knobbly green root things which grow partially above soil level. It was the knobbly roots that made me call it the monster plant. I’m trying to get it out as I don’t really like it all that much, and would rather replace it with something else. On top of that, it must have grown since it was put in as it has knocked a couple of bricks out of the wall it’s next to. Unfortunately there’s some sort of electric cable running near it so we need to be careful when digging it out.

You can see the electric cable in the photo - isn't the plant weird though?!

We also have a few random plants in this area: a rhubarb, some daffodils, some cyclamen and a foxglove - it’s the holding area really. Eventually these will probably be moved, but for now they are quite happy there. We’re in the very early stages of planning what will be done where, so for the moment a holding bed is quite useful. 

Finally, we had three different fir trees. One was pretty small, one was medium height but with thick branches, and the other one was so tall and dense that it overshadowed the garden. We decided pretty early on that we would need to get these out. I’d prefer to have more trees in the world, not fewer, but they were in completely the wrong place. 

You can only really see them in the background in this picture, but the mass expanse of dark green is quite visible.

For Christmas we were given some loppers, so this spring, we set to work. We were careful to only do a little at a time at first. This was partly to make sure we didn’t disturb any birds that might have been nesting (although we were pretty sure there weren’t any in these trees) and partly so we could see the difference gradually, rather than making a fast, drastic change. The idea behind this was was to allow us to work out what we might want to do with the area. 

We took on the smallest tree first. It wasn’t too much trouble to take off the branches and just leave a narrow trunk. There was an immediate difference in the amount of light coming through, so we carried on chopping.

You can see the little stump on the left. Obviously this was taken at a different time of day to the picture above, but you can see where there is light all around in the left-hand side of the picture. 

Next up was the medium height tree. I managed to get a fair amount of this down, however most of the lower branches were too thick to take off with the loppers and required a saw. Luckily, ever since my husband and I moved in together about five years ago, my in-laws have been buying us tools and equipment as birthday and Christmas presents. We now own a selection of saws, so my husband has been working on tree number two, and there are now only a few lower branches left to remove. 

The largest tree was actually less difficult than the middle one. Most of the branches were lopper-friendly, and after a garden session where I may have gone a little overboard and forgotten the ‘a little bit at a time’ plan, half of the tree was down. I ended up driving to the tip twice in one day to put the branches in the garden waste section, as our garden bin was already full. Since then my other half has removed the rest of the branches, as well as half of the trunk, so a lot of progress has been made. 

Sorry for the appalling photography - I took the photo at totally the wrong time of day. You can see how the mass of dark green has mostly gone though. And you can see my pretty purple rhododendron. No-one would have known it was there! I suppose we'll have to paint that odd fence panel now though.

And voila, tree stumps.

I spent a while cutting the tree waste up, so that we can take it to the garden waste section of the local tip sometime this week. It looks a lot neater than it did when my husband was in charge (by his own account he’s good at making a mess!).

The pile of garden waste as left by my husband.

The pile of garden waste after I sorted it. Not that I'm obsessed with making things tidy or anything.

There is so much more light coming through now that the trees are almost gone. It makes the garden look bigger as well, but for me the light is the best thing. The boat area/herb garden had some areas towards the back right that were completely boggy, and which never got any light. Now the soil has started to dry out, and it looks like I will be able to plant in it. 

We still need to take down the trunks, and in all honesty we might need to get someone in to do that for us. The fun bit can now begin though - we get to plan what we want to put in the area. It sounds like I’ll be planning the planting around the crazy golf course, as when I arrived home from work one day last week my husband started to tell me, in all seriousness, where he thought the obstacles, fairways and holes would go. When I thought about it, I figured it does sound quite fun, and will give me some structure to plan the garden around as well. The ‘fir tree area’ will need some height, either from plants or from something ornamental, however it’s become clear that we really need to make sure that the planting doesn’t prevent the light from coming through. 

One thing’s for sure: it’s going to take some time. Better get cracking...