Our Country Hedge
As part of our site development we wanted to plant 'country hedge' along the new fence we put up to divide our field from the one next door. A country hedge is a mix of indigenous species usually based on hawthorn and blackthorn to make it spikey and inpenetrable (natural barbed wire) with other things mixed in like dog rose, cornus and maple. I managed to find some very good value plants at Ashridge Nursery http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/ and ordered 300 bare root plants. I place the order back in October and the delivery arrived, on time, in the first week in December. When it tunred up I regretted my earlier zeal as, with everything else going, we didnt really have time for this amount of planting. But once they had arrived we knew we had no choice.
It took my husband and I about 10 man-hours to get it planted. It didnt look very exicting but we have high hopes for the future.
Just one problem - I forgot to order the tree guards and although i did order them soon after planting we have already lost some to the rabbits. I urge anyone else planting hedge to avoid making the same mistake.