20090531 Restoration of Burned Out Hedge

At last it happened! After some dry weather a section of the waddle hedge created during the BBC Breathing Spaces works has been torched a couple of days ago. I was out when it happened but apparently the Fire brigade had to be called in twice!

This was always a serious preoccupation from the inception of these hedges. They look great, and are easy to build, when they are fresh and new but when they dry out become just a large pile of dried timber.

To be sincere the only thing I wander is why it has not happened already. It is a problem that will need some sort of solution but at the moment the only thing is to try and maintain the hedge. It is slowly but surely degrading so maybe with a bit of time it will collapse. Yet it'll cause problems for the future of the Wild Life Area in its present state.

In any case with Julian we tried to repair the edge, taking advantage of some dry weather and the abundance of cutting left over from the renewal works in the kick-about field.

Certainly therewas some damage but it could have been worse. The main risk it have a repeat and for someone to call the area a fire hazard and call for a cut down of the vegetation or imperilling the newly, de facto, status of being part of the main body of the Surrey Square Park.

In any case with good spirit we went to work.

The Wild Life Area is verdant and nicely recovering from the stripping down during the BBC program works. The West side look still bear after the cutting down of the shrubs abutting the old fence but at least with some of our input and consideration from the contractor part, I hope it will recover soon.

Fortunately we were able to save most of the cutting from the west side (and even more luckily they weren't burned out!) so we had plenty of material to affect the repairs. Julian as usual was in his element and much of the skill in restoring the hedge was down to him.

While at it we did a little cleaning too. We all left sutisfied that we did what we could.