The garden directly to the front of the house is lawn, er well, OK, grass which stretches down to the pond. To the left the land rises sharply and there we planted an assortment of trees and ground cover shrubs. The intention was that it would be low maintenance, but that is not how it is in practice. Brambles and nettles run rampant. Battling them is exactly that, with scratches and stings to prove it.

For a number of reasons we neglected this area of the garden for a few years but have recently begun tackling it again, giving the Webmaster and excuse to buy a new chainsaw which he has been busy learning how to use.

Across the road from our garden are two mature sycamore trees and there seedlings appear to thrive in our garden. They grow like weeds and we need to be ever vigilant in weeding them out, but they are not as prolific as the holly. We have spent the last summer tearing up holly saplings that almost litterally carpeted the whole area. Only too late did we realise we should have saved them to begin a new hedge to replace a row of leylandi around the old riding arena.

We have a second area of woodland which we planted in the corner of our top field. When we moved in the field was perfectly usable but after a few years the council put in a new drainage system for the road and diverted all the surface water into our field. Naturally we complained but it was to no avail. They even tried to claim they had an easement. The bastards. No one can claim and easement to cause such serious damage to another's property. We have spent a fortune on drainage, twice engaging professional land drainage engineers to put in enahnced drains, but most of the field is now unusable. However, the trees seem to be in a relatively dry section and so far appear to be surviving.  We are wondering whether we should invest in willows and other water resistant trees in a last attempt to improve the quality of the field. It is so water logged now we can't even walk across it.

See our test showing that water from the road is delivered to our field