When I moved into this house about 7 years ago, there was a row of very mature Leylandii above a retaining wall at the back of the garden. The branches stretched out well over the garden, blocking all the light – also over the neighbour’s garden behind.
I decided to try and use them as a feature, by getting a tree guy to cut all the branches off. Leylandii die when you do this, but I was gambling that the trunks would survive a long time, as I’ve seen ancient conifer trunks sticking up towards the sky elsewhere.
So I stapled stock fencing to the back of them, and grew various climbers etc up the fence. It’s been great since – till I discovered one of them has rotted clean through at the bottom now, and is only hanging in place from the fencing and (now quite strong) climbers. It's this one:
All the others are still rock solid. The problem may be that I ran one of those sprinkler systems along behind the trunks 3 years ago, and have been drenching them to water the climbers. Not sure why only one trunk rotted, but there you go…
So it’s going to have to go. Along with the sprinkler system. Now I know you’re going to tell me they’ll all have to come down, and maybe they will, but there is no sign of rot, so not yet.
I am struggling to get anybody to come round and do it, so I thought about maybe doing it myself with a chainsaw? There’s a cheap one in B&Q, only £75. I’d probably only use it this once, but that alone would probably be cheaper than getting somebody in – even if I could.
What do you reckon? Easy job? The trunk is maybe 6-8” thick towards the bottom.
Anywhere I could get a decent video tutorial on chainsaw safety?
Cheers
I decided to try and use them as a feature, by getting a tree guy to cut all the branches off. Leylandii die when you do this, but I was gambling that the trunks would survive a long time, as I’ve seen ancient conifer trunks sticking up towards the sky elsewhere.
So I stapled stock fencing to the back of them, and grew various climbers etc up the fence. It’s been great since – till I discovered one of them has rotted clean through at the bottom now, and is only hanging in place from the fencing and (now quite strong) climbers. It's this one:
All the others are still rock solid. The problem may be that I ran one of those sprinkler systems along behind the trunks 3 years ago, and have been drenching them to water the climbers. Not sure why only one trunk rotted, but there you go…
So it’s going to have to go. Along with the sprinkler system. Now I know you’re going to tell me they’ll all have to come down, and maybe they will, but there is no sign of rot, so not yet.
I am struggling to get anybody to come round and do it, so I thought about maybe doing it myself with a chainsaw? There’s a cheap one in B&Q, only £75. I’d probably only use it this once, but that alone would probably be cheaper than getting somebody in – even if I could.
What do you reckon? Easy job? The trunk is maybe 6-8” thick towards the bottom.
Anywhere I could get a decent video tutorial on chainsaw safety?
Cheers
