Beardie

Pity it had to come down; you had the makings of a topiary sheep right there!

It does have the poor form and muddy purple tint to the foliage that I associate with purple crab apple.

Get someone with a decent camera to take a photo.

Interesting design. They steam-bent many of the pieces, but apparently it is possible to build a paraboloid structure using only straight pieces. It's a bit like those pictures made from string woven around nails on a board, but in 3D. Given that they were to use plastic for the ridge, I wonder why they didn't take the opportunity to make it into a skylight.

Yeah, any of them except perhaps the Betulas. You mention keeping them to an 'acceptable size'. Birches don't like to be pruned and never look better afterwards.

To get back on topic... I agree with Paul in the woods, that the trees will most likely fail fairly soon. If you kill the trees, you also kill the roots which are holding the trees up, so they will blow down in high winds. If they last long enough to gain any significant ivy growth, that's even worse because there's the weight of the ivy, plus the wind resistance of all those broad evergreen leaves. Dead trees covered in ivy are potentially very dangerous.

Definitely apple, I'd say. Ornamental crab apples come in all sorts of colours and I've seen some with fruits smaller than that. Very early for any kind of apple, though.

Thank you all. I'll probably leave it for the moment; it needs some mechanical attention and I might as well get that done during the summer. I suppose one approach is to get some Rustypaint and make it look even scruffier than it is.

"Competitive salary" = "We'll set candidates up against each other in a sort of blind auction to see who asks the least".

I have an old Navara which a previous owner resprayed white, this is flaking off in patches showing the original red. Mostly though, it seems firmly attached. Does anyone have ideas for removing it without causing too much damage to the original paint?

You need to speak to the Tree Officer at the council. Trees with TPOs can be felled if they endanger a house, but you need to prove it, which would involve having it monitored over a period of time.

Coppicing & Coppice crafts, Rebecca Oaks and Edward Mills, Crowood Press, 2010. ISBN 978 1 84797 212 5

It might be useful to know what timbers are available from your nearby forest. We could recommend any number of suitable species, but this is no use if they are not available.

+1 for holly. It often produces those thornless leaves on long straggly stems when growing in a thicket.

The terminal bud looks very much like Rhododendron,and the leaves are narrower than cherry laurel.