A-hedging we will go

Rain was forecast for lunchtime today, but we figured if we pulled out our collective fingers we'd be able to at least plant *some* of our nice new copper beech hedge plants - which arrived on Wednesday - before the shower started, and having achieved something in the garden I'd feel less guilty about taking time out to see the new Star Trek movie later.

The morning was deceptively sunny as we stepped out immediately after breakfast, and sized up the task. Starting at the furthest cleared point (where the pond used to be) and working back towards the house, the line of the hedge was pretty obvious to start with, demarked as it is by the large acer that sat behind the pond, and an old dead tree stump.

With three bags of well-rotted manure to give the plants a head start, mixed with the soil from the trench, we dug in (haha!) and got on with the task, which went surprisingly smoothly with me digging and planting, and Nikki fetching the trees, taking away the empty pots and making sure I had a ready supply of manure. We reached the acer in record time (trench one) and filled the gap between acer and stump inside the first hour (trench two).

We decided to press on, and strung some string between the tree stump and a random piece of breeze block beside the conservatory to give us the line to hedge to for the latter half of the job. Just as the string was tied and I'd dug trench three, a few spots of rain made their presence felt. Not wanting to leave a newly-dug trench to fill with water, we ignored the rain and carried on planting. A good move as it turned out, because the short shower had stopped by the time we reached the Camelia that marked the end of trench three.

So on we went with trench four - the final frontier - completing the whole job in a little over two hours, which greatly surprised me as I'd expected to have to do it over two days. Feeling very pleased with the end result, which looks for the time being like a thin row of plants but will hopefully grow into a hedge much quicker than the forlorn row of dead sticks that represent my previous experience of beech hedging, we set off for the afternoon showing of Star Trek.