Hedge v Fence

Jean-Luc has been very busy in the garden this week.

Before

After

Can you see what's changed?  

It's a little difficult to see but peer closely.......

 Yes Jean-Luc's taken out the fence between us and our neighbours.

It's not as drastic as it sounds as the fence doesn't actually mark the boundary between the two properties.  The true boundary is a hedge, but at some time in the past previous owners have erected a fence in the garden about a foot in from the hedge.

A foot doesn't sound much but it makes managing the hedge difficult for our neighbour and the panels cut down the light into the garden quite a bit; as we're planning to put the veggie beds in soon we decided they had to go.

It wasn't an easy job as the fence had concrete posts and baseboards and the posts were concreted into the ground very, very securely.

So we had to dig under the baseboards to lift them out; then dig down as far as possible around the posts to give some room for Jean-Luc to sledge hammer the posts down and then use an angle grinder to cut through the iron bars that reinforced the posts.  The concrete footings for the posts were far too big to dig out so Jean-Luc then had to hammer the remaining reinforcing bars back over the remaining stumps of the posts and rebury the remains.

He did a sterling job and it only took him 3 1/2 hours to do it - amazing work!

The garden looks much more open now

and I have more border to fill up next spring - room to move some of the lysimachia.

Of course all the work was inspected and approved.

We're grateful for the supervision.