September notes 2014

by David Tidmarsh - 12:47 on 16 November 2014

Kens Nature Notes

As I look around our Village I can see signs of the changing season as we drift into autumn. It is a softer season with warm colours leaves falling and fruits ripening.

However at the moment my thoughts and mind are firmly stuck on a hedge. Not just any hedge, this one in particular I helped to plant. An idea at the time I thought was quite exciting however it has turned out to be a yolk around my neck.

Thinking back to 1999 our Conservation Group were looking for a project to widen our profile and hopefully draw in more volunteers to help in the work we were planning for the Village.

An idea was drawn up to clean and tidy up our local Churchyard. The poplar trees were well out of control and needed pollarding; this meant reducing their height by half. I enlisted the help of my oldest son Kevin who had finished his training at Houghall Collage in Arboriculture. We borrowed a wood chipper from Chester council and completed the pollarding task.

We applied for a hedging grant from Durham County Council and were successful, so with the help of our volunteers we rotavated a strip from the main road down to the Tennis court wall of the cricket club adjacent to Violet Crescent.

A mixed hedge was planted mainly hawthorn and blackthorn with a bit of holly. The Council came out and checked that we had used all the stock that we had been issued the grant for and we were told we had to maintain it for ten years, renewing any that might die.

I managed to salvage some bird’s mouth fencing from Chester District Council to finish the job off at no cost to the group other than the hard work that we all put in.

It is now 2014, fifteen years have passed and I am stuck with the task of cutting it every year. Fifteen years ago it wasn’t a problem and to be honest I thought when I reached my retirement years the County Council who granted us the hedging grant would be honourable enough to take on the maintenance of this hedge, but no, they refuse to have anything to do with it.

I have finished cutting it this year with some help from a couple of my conservation volunteers, both who are older than me! But is it fair to ask for help? The help we really need is for someone else to take over this hedge.

Hindsight is a marvellous thing and would I have planted this hedge fifteen years ago again? I probably would because we made a massive improvement to an area that was an eyesore to the Village. So what of the future for this hedge? Answers on a post card please!

Ken Clark.

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