openspaceman

Ah, a bit far. If closer I would have lent you something to try.

No

I doubt that. It is to do with the prescriptive use of the land, if you cease to maintain a garden, plant it with trees and shut the gate, it becomes a woodland and the forestry act applies. I do have little bits of experience of the problems that arise from this. A large house in Haslemere had been sold off as three separate dwellings with right of access over the shared drive which had been retained by my client, the owner of the main house. I was felling some large oak and a douglas bordering the long drive. One of the other owners complained ( my client should have warned them of the work) and when I carried on they summoned the FC who told me to stop (too late as we had felled what we were to). They then proceeded to measure trees and cordwood. I made it clear I was working in a garden and acknowledged the volume was well over 5m3. The FC officer laughed and I left. I heard no more, had the timber collected and got on with life. Next time I met the FC officer in their offices with other private woodland officers present he said to me I had no sense of humour, he was right. The other was nearer here, a large nursery which had been inherited by an acquaintance who had planted it up with Xmas trees. Over time those that had not sold had grown into second thinning size, although a bit too branchy for sawlogs or bars. He asked me if I would fell them for the timber. I agreed and said I would apply for a felling licence, he declined as he, rightly, thought this would mean a restocking condition. He buldozed the lot into a heap with his case 850 and burned them. Someone did complain to the FC but they did nothing.

you beat me

Forestry act 1967 section 9 subsection 2b: (2)Subsection (1) above does not apply— (b)to the felling of fruit trees or trees standing or growing on land comprised in an orchard, garden, churchyard or public open space;

Why not? If it is within the curtilage of a dwelling it is exempt. You may have to debate where a garden becomes a woodland but if it has been maintained for the amenity and enjoyment of a household it is a garden.

Precisely and it has been tarted up for sale. I guess you are nowhere near me?

Following on from my earlier posts I wandered past some of the trees I did formative pruning on 20+ years ago. These oaks were self seeded on the heath and they actually damage that particular habitat and I expected them to be removed but am quite glad they are still there to demonstrate the result. This first one shows how an open grown oak has produced a clean stem that impedes nothing underneath and has a symmetrical well shaped crown. I would say it has a high amenity. The second picture shows the same tree off to the right and its neighbour which I had done some initial pruning on but after a while had decided to let it go because of the fork which has actually grown into a good union.

I do on the one my neighbour planted between us. It is a regular task to prevent the damn thing taking over the front lawn. I had suggested a 4 ft picket fence 😞 and now have this 12 foot monstrosity. Horrible plant for a hedge. Doubly bad because I spend some of my spare time ripping it out of some nature reserves.

I'm not sure what you mean and I don't know exactly where the problem was but the flue rises vertically till the loft then bends right about 45° to the centre of the house then 45° back and then vertically to the chimney pot. I suspect the inflated sausage did not maintain its position concetrically with the old chimney and more concrete ended up on the outside of the bend and when the rod was in tension it jammed the brush to one side but was able to push it out the pot.

I have a 8" chimney, the lining is a concrete which was pumped in round an inflated liner (I do not recommend this I was young and naive), I did manage to get a traditional brush with a wooden boss up it once but it wouldn't come down and had to be unscrewed from the top. I now use a brush which is more like strimmer lines and an electric drill.

I hope it doesn't develop. Have you had the jab and at what age did you catch chicken pox, some faintly remembered factoid is that you are more pre disposed to shingles if you caught chickenpox under 24 months.

Isn't the apparent lean an ephemera of a relatively wide angle lens? Look at the way the RHS building seems to lean the other way.

Just a bit before my time but it hadn't changed that much from the map until the 1970s. I can make out the intersection of the road adjacent to this house which had already been here 80 years in 1945. Mind I suspect that this was a re jigged map of the 1931 survey.

Cheeky whippersnappers should take note of their elders if they have asked for advice

Swot I sed

Not really, yes the aim is to concentrate growth onto one vertical stem up to 20 foot length, this keeps branches out of the way of any work underneath in the future. Not cutting the co dominant stems completely is so vigour is not reduced by removing too much active leaf area. Obviously trying to anticipate formative pruning from a 2D photo is not going to translate well to what one might decide to do on site. Not every tree is going to produce a good form and you cannot odds a weak fork once it has developed, those trees will come out at a thinning. By year 50 you probably only want a tree every 25 foot and not much crown competition then (unless you are aiming for something like the french system of forestry with gun barrel straight sawlogs 40' long and 200 years in the making). The english tax system post 1945 meant that you are unlikely to see the quality of broadleaved woodland that I earned a living felling, from 1978 to 1995. My point is that establishing trees in the manner of traditional oak and beech plantations or coppice with standards will produce a tree with full crown and clear stem which have a high amenity.

Just to disfavour branches that may become co dominant.

Back in the day I used to check transits that had been issued to the troop of subbies engaged by gangmasters for our work. I decided to charge the said gangs for my time emptying their rubbish. No backing from the bosses who wallowed in the profits made for them by these utility workers would teach me a lesson, they would put their rubbish back into the orange plastic bags from the local express mini market and chuck it out in the lane leading back to the yard. I soon decided it was better for the environment for me to clean the trucks when they were in the yard.

Yes I understand. The thing is IMO that trees grown the forestry way are likely to survive to a ripe age whereas stunted knotty widely spaced trees are unlikely to because somewhere along their life the large lower limbs are going to get in the way of something, especially as they grow out over a drive, that they will be poorly cut off leaving a wound open to decay which will affect the tree's health. Also as the canopy closes those large lower limbs are going to get shaded out and die, leaving large dead knots which will never heal over. We saw this a lot in oak standards and coppice woodland that had been left to grow on with no cyclical removal of the standards. Instead of majestic oaks with short clean boles and a huge live canopy sitting like an island in a sea of underwood the crowns closed canopy and mutually shaded out the big branches which had developed over the underwood, killing them. The first picture in my post above is of a plantation of a wealthy old chap who had bought arable field next to his very large garden and planted it with oak, beech, cherry, hornbeam and ash ( it was interesting to see how far the ash had been infected right down to the stumps when felled). It had been well established and mechanically weeded between the rows over a period, so no other woody plants had become established in between, hence the coarse branching, then squirrels found it. I was asked by his regular arborist to help thinning this 25 year old plantation, unseen until I got there last month. It was a dilemma, especially in view of the ash dieback, there was no reason to thin and as we were on a day rate we did the best to start recovering what we could. One thing we could see was the oak were likely to be the only final crop and the only ones that had good form were those that had been suppressed by more vigorous neighbours as their branching was finer and they were looking more drawn up. Like you the owner said he was doing it for posterity yet he had been poorly advised on post planting treatment that would be necessary when there was nothing left of the planting grant. Attached picture of one of your trees to try and illustrate what I would do, red lines are cuts and the two vertical lines to show which branches need removing for a first lift (cuts at branch collar).

If you think about it planting at 4 or 5 foot spacings, as most mature woodlands were, would have had one or two thinnings to be at the spacing of modern 10 foot planting.

Measure the average top height of both species, this will give you an idea of the yield class from which you can see when you can start thinning, then you can initially halo the best stems. Also squirrel damage tends to start low, often at a branch and go up, so a pruned stem can have benefit in limiting damage to higher in the crown. As a rule of thumb in oak and beech you should prune before the stem diameter at the branch exceeds 4" and cut the branch on the collar before it exceeds 1" diameter. Stem length after pruning should not exceed 60% of the top height. Weak forks above the pruned height can be shortened to limit their competitiveness. I would aim for a clean stem of 20 foot in 3 or four lifts over a few years then leave the rest of management to thinning.

They do not need thinning yet, they need the competition from their neighbours to maintain apical dominance and height growth over growth of side branches. That said they would benefit from some formative pruning to achieve a length of clean stems, this of course is for clear knot free timber but it is also better for access, if it is done at this stage then the wounds are small and occlude rapidly. Left till later the side branches get much larger and either die off or get cut off and compromise the stem. This is a big problem with modern widely spaced planting and ends with a situation like this: Or later still this:

Probably Prunus lusitanica then, portuguese laurel

They often do come under the definition of waste but at one time the environment agency made a position statement excepting most arb waste but though it included "virgin timber" this did not include hedge cuttings or soil contaminated bio waste so most firms would need to have a waste carriers licence. This discussion was from 9 years back and the EA have probably moved the goal posts since.