Rushes

You are all mad I tell you mad! You are creating a forest of willow that will never die and will laugh at you! This is the kind of thing that you do to enemies not yourself.

Get the gloves that stop you chopping your fingers off, cheap at the price.

Seriously need any rain here, had 5mm last night which kept somethings alive, others are giving up the ghost.

I had an injured bat that I thought needed dispatching - rang these people to ask if and how I should do it: 403 Forbidden WWW.BATS.ORG.UK They had someone come round within 20 minutes, evaluate and dispatch [don't think it was legal for me to do it]. They were amazingly helpful. Worth a try.

My mother has a couple of fields of these. My advice would be do nothing, the ones that work for the environment will grow and the ones that won't die. After 5-10 years you won't see much difference. One is 20 years and looks fine, one is 7 and the ones that survived haven't filled the space yet, they will.

Try taking the seeds out and exposing them in varying amounts to the burnt pine cone [some heat and smoke residue]. Species like this are often triggered to emerge by heat and smoke.

Recommend Kania traps for squirrels - work a treat and dispatch them instantly.

If you start looking at alternatives that could go there it might be easier to take the decisin to remove it. Check out a Paulownia - really fast growing would prefer dry but worth a go.

If it is park scale then you can take a pragmatic approach - just keep planting trees. You will have them at all different ages, the old ones will die the young ones grow and the ones in the middle work their way along to being old. Much better to invest money in a sucession of trees than spend money looking after one. If it's in your garden - that's different.

Pigs - just fence pigs on it. Shoul be break even.

When I bought my first house there was something called MIRAS - mortgage income relief at source. You got a tax rebate for the mortgage on one house. That went away and landlords were able to get higher rents as a result - because housing wasn't subsided. I wonder if bringing this back would enable people to own their own houses - added to this the mortgages of landlords no longer being tax deductible [I think I am correct here?] then the balance would move to private ownership. Wouldn't be cheap but fixer uppers would attract VAT - which would increase revenue to HMRC [landlords are vatable so can reclaim] Would that work?

Put a drain at the bottom of the slope - don't tarmac the slope this will make any water problem worse. You could put a drain near the house - but not sure how much it would be used if the first one is doing it's work. I would do the drain and then let it settle and see how it is. Basically if you have the water away what you surface it with is down to you.

Looks like a downward slope to the house. if you are somewhere it rains hard I would worry less about the pooling water and more about how you get the water away. When you have got the water gone before it hits your drive you can worry about the surface. I can't stress how much I would concentrate on getting the water away first. Worry about the surface after. I live in one of the driest counties in the UK and this was a problem I had to solve.

Rowans are generous in their seed. I just gathered a lot, they were at different stages of maturity and threw them in a pot. Some came up many didn't, but I wasn't looking for commercial germination rates - just enough for me. Don't worry to much. Only advice that might be worth something, harvest the seeds from a mature tree that is growing in a similar situation to yours if you are looking for longevity [rowans aren't known for it]

Maybe try this? https://www.theplasticpeople.co.uk/magnetic-double-glazing-kit/