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.

 Looks like liquidambar, aka sweetgum. You're in for a treat when it colours up for autumn in shades of yellow and red. Grows to about 20m, so yours is about half-grown.

10 hours ago, Retired Climber said:

Willow Oak?

Hadn't heard of that, but looked it up and it could be. Maybe it self-seeded from a landscape planting somewhere.

Helping to weed a border, this turns up. Everything about it says "oak" except the shape of the leaves. Doesn't look quite like Holm oak. It's not deformation due to chemical spray drift, as it's in the grounds of a conservation charity and nowhere near any fields. Is it just a Sessile oak with no lobes? (Ignore the Cotoneaster.)

Maybe don't leave it for 4 months between treatments? If it's mown off every time it shows its face, it has to give up eventually. Of course, this is dependent on getting the entire colony; if part of it is on a neighbour's garden, they'll have to do the same.

It looks as though it would do a somersault if you did an emergency stop.

There's no indication of scale on the close-up, but if those cones are pea-sized, I'd go for Squarrosa cypress, not Lawson.

On 26/12/2020 at 14:46, Jack.P said:

This is the first attempt  at fine woodworking but needs the base hollowing out now and edge bevelled 

 

Intriguing. Why not finish the seat before final assembly?

Accidentally went down the wrong driveway when delivering something near Shifnal on Christmas Eve. Startled to see they had a climbing rose with a single pink flower on it.

A friend of mine does butterflies; I think they are no more than half an inch for a two inch thick slab.

That tree looks awfully small to have spread its roots so far. Have you found actual tree roots under the slabs, and have you traced them to that tree?