Yew savaging

[campanula]

nooooo, this gets worse and worse (as a few of you have already sniffed out) - there is no paperwork because there has been no application from what now appears to be complete cowboys. My customer is a solicitor ffs! And as far as I can see now, he is the custodian with a duty of care to 2 yews under a TPO and has utterly failed in that duty.

Big fines on the way.....but worse, he has just bought this listed building.........18C and I am almost sure his 'builder' is from the same stock of utter amateurs.

 

What to say - crazed idiots all round!

[MattyF]

Yew will recover , he will be unlucky if they don't !! from my experience only one in ten seem to give up... I've mutilated a few, I have one that has just come back from planning on Friday to turn in too a 6ft stump.. I will mill the timber ... Tree will grow back... Don't see what the problem is really ... Pollards outlast any tree given no management at all is how I would justify it.

[Graham]

How big is 'enormous and venerable'? Pollarding is a great way of managing yew but it should be initiated from a young age and not with the complete removal of large limbs from older trees.

 

I'm sure they will show signs of recovery for a few years ie new shoots but they will be using their own reserves to achieve this. I'd get a good mulch layer over the rootplates and keep them well covered.

[campanula]

These are not 20 year old striplings - they are (were) 24-30in diameter and around 18m high (although this is an estimate and could be a bit less, but tall, anyway) and at least 100 years old. Never had any work as far as I can see (festooned with ancient honeysuckle, gnarly, almost elm-like in silhouette). I don't think I am fully conveying just how dreadful these massive trunks with completely flat tops look - there is no branching nor any shred of green growth whatsoever, - my eye actually failed to recognise it as a tree and scittered past.

I am going to have to have another long talk with my customer cos it is beginning to seem like he was quite complicit in this tree fiasco and was actually more concerned about the screaming evidence of his misbehaviour right on the front of the house than he was about the actual demise of the tree (although he did at least come to his senses and stop them having another 2 down). I certainly had wondered at his obvious misery and newly expressed love of trees, joining me in grief, but all is coming horribly clear to me.

Sheesh - the public. Don't ya just love them?

[MattyF]

At that height and dbh I would age them around 60 .. The ones I have done and doing soon are around that and bigger than that description.. It is a myth yew grows slowly!!

[Mark Bolam]

Your customer should by some lube because he will get shafted when the TPO police find out.

[Lyn Ed]

can you not put some pics up

[campanula]

Oh, I will, I will.

 

Yep, a shafting is, I think, in the post.

[david wood]

where i work we did some very old yew hedges and they have recovered almost to point of full cover inside 12 years.

we only did one face at a time though. some pics to follow

[david wood]

couple of different hedges we did. will try to remember and get more current pics of how they have recovered but all good and now trimmed yearly