Never underestimate the power of a woman with a good pair of loppers.
Armed with those loppers, plus clippers, a pruning saw and a stout pair of gloves, I finally triumphed last week over the dastardly privet hedge that runs along one side of my property. The process has taken just this side of forever–almost two years–and when the end finally came, I was so elated that I was sure the theme from Rocky was playing somewhere in the background.
A lesser mortal might have called the landscapers and paid them handsomely to remove the whole hedge, but I am made of sterner stuff. I couldn’t bear to waste the mature privets, rowdy and unwieldy as they were. Just as a sculptor sees beauty in a pristine hunk of marble or granite, I saw beauty in my wisteria-infested overgrown shrubs. I sweated to bring that beauty out.
It’s a good thing that I enjoy the process.
The hedge, which straddles the property line, has been there for years. Originally it went all the way from the front sidewalk to within ten feet of the garage, a distance of some one hundred linear feet. Over time the hedge suffered, as the young hemlock and weeping cherry tree planted on the other side grew to maturity and began to shade some of the sun-loving privets. While the specimens in the sunnier parts thrived, the shaded shrubs remained smaller and thinner, and a few died all together.
Then there is the wisteria. At some time in the past, my current neighbor’s predecessor installed some Japanese wisteria, probably in the hopes that it would drape itself pleasingly over the arched wooded gate that provides a passage between the two properties. Perhaps she also thought that the wisteria would beautify the old wire cemetery fencing that still runs between the arch and the garage. The wisteria has proved to be healthy, resilient and downright unstoppable. It long ago dominated the wooden arch, ingratiated itself among the fence wires and began climbing up nearby trees. It snuggled up to the privet, working its way over, under, around and through the shrubs’ branches. The wisteria’s roots run for miles, snaking through both properties and popping up everywhere. The only way to get rid of it would be to drop an herbicide bomb or teach the groundhogs to eat wisteria. Even then, it might be touch and go.
And so, doing battle with the privet meant battling the wisteria. It also meant hand to hand combat with honeysuckle, bittersweet, poison ivy, Virginia creeper, barberry, wild grape and various self-sown trees, including the extraordinarily tenacious mulberry. The base of the line of shrubs is home to wild ageratum and wild asters, not to mention dandelions, crabgrass and Asiatic day flower. I am rather fond of the asters, so I try not to pull them out as I go after their less desirable neighbors.
Owners of privet hedges know that privet takes advantage of you. Unlike the better-mannered boxwood, privet grows at a healthy rate. That is why it is vitally important to decide once and for all how tall you want your privet hedge. Privet can grow to be fifteen feet tall, and, if left to its own devices in a hedge situation, can grow so tall that it finally becomes top heavy and falls over. Long before that happens, however, you will have to stand on a ladder to trim it. When our privet reached that stage, I decided that it was time for severe hedge renovation. Ladders and cutting tools don’t mix well anyway, but when you combine the two with a slightly vertiginous gardener, the potential for injury is just too high.
So I began at one end, and started the process of taking several feet off the hedge, bringing it to a manageable four feet tall. Some of the trunks of the mature shrubs were in excess of two inches thick, requiring heavy labor with the pruning saw. The project was often interrupted by the need to tend the rest of the garden, trim the more disciplined hedge that bounds two other sides of my property, meet deadlines, attend to community service-related tasks and help get my teenaged daughter into college. Last month, with high school graduation day looming on the horizon, only about eight linear feet of hedge remained. I was determined that the family and friends expected for the big event would see a completely renovated privet hedge. I clipped, lopped, sheared and sawed steadily, until finally, two days before graduation, I removed the last tall branches. The cats should have been impressed, but they weren’t. The groundhogs should have taken time out from stuffing themselves to stand up and cheer, but the silence was deafening. Fortunately several of my neighbors were favorably impressed, and said so as they walked by with their dogs.
But hedge renovation, like all other aspects of gardening, is really about the process. Over the past two years I have triumphed over bad weather, sciatica, the itch of poison ivy and the skepticism of my husband and child. I am the undisputed scourge of the rampant hedge and leveler of rambunctious greenery. This major victory has given me enormous confidence. Now I am ready to tackle the ultimate gardener’s challenge–groundhog eviction.