Pipp
Well-Known Member
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2006/nov/25/gardens5
Elspeth Thompson
The Guardian, Saturday 25 November 2006
During our first summer in the railway carriage house, rabbits devoured the vegetable patch and our neighbour's horse would wander in through gaps in the hedge to eat the apples. So it was high time to construct a fence.
Creosoted larchlap was clearly a no-no from both the aesthetic and the ecological point of view. Picket was too twee and hurdles too rustic. In the end, we decided to echo the simple cleft post and rail fencing in the surrounding farmland, and rabbit-proof it with chicken wire dug in to a depth of 2ft and at right-angles to the ground.
As luck would have it, the chap who delivers our firewood makes fencing from timber harvested from his own sustainably managed woodland, and he suggested sweet chestnut because, like cedar, it contains its own natural preservative and so requires no treatment to last at least 20 years.
While the trench for the rabbit-proofing was being dug, I seized the opportunity to fill the gaps in the hedge with bare-rooted native hedging plants such as hawthorn, hazel and guelder rose, with scented honeysuckle at the gate.
A year and a half later, the wood has weathered to driftwood silver, the plants have grown and we've only one cause for complaint - we'd wondered why we never saw the neighbours mowing the lawn, while we're out every weekend in summer just to keep the grass down. And then we realised: they still had nature's petrol- and power-free alternative to the mower, complete with floppy ears and fluffy tail.
Elspeth Thompson
The Guardian, Saturday 25 November 2006
During our first summer in the railway carriage house, rabbits devoured the vegetable patch and our neighbour's horse would wander in through gaps in the hedge to eat the apples. So it was high time to construct a fence.
Creosoted larchlap was clearly a no-no from both the aesthetic and the ecological point of view. Picket was too twee and hurdles too rustic. In the end, we decided to echo the simple cleft post and rail fencing in the surrounding farmland, and rabbit-proof it with chicken wire dug in to a depth of 2ft and at right-angles to the ground.
As luck would have it, the chap who delivers our firewood makes fencing from timber harvested from his own sustainably managed woodland, and he suggested sweet chestnut because, like cedar, it contains its own natural preservative and so requires no treatment to last at least 20 years.
While the trench for the rabbit-proofing was being dug, I seized the opportunity to fill the gaps in the hedge with bare-rooted native hedging plants such as hawthorn, hazel and guelder rose, with scented honeysuckle at the gate.
A year and a half later, the wood has weathered to driftwood silver, the plants have grown and we've only one cause for complaint - we'd wondered why we never saw the neighbours mowing the lawn, while we're out every weekend in summer just to keep the grass down. And then we realised: they still had nature's petrol- and power-free alternative to the mower, complete with floppy ears and fluffy tail.
