Connecting with the past! - and great personal therapy.

Yesterday I did battle with an ancient hawthorn hedge and I think the result was a score draw. My arms are well scratched and one elbow is very sore, but no scars or lasting damage. In return I stripped out loads or asphyxiating ivy dead wood and debris leaving the remaining hawthorn plants with space and light to grow again – at least that is what I hope.

It took me a day to deal with and clear 10 metres, but feels well worth it. I have more than a few more days work ahead of me.

In some ways I felt connected with the past. The hedge is old, at least 100 years and probably older. We lie on an one of the first roads around here at what I think is an old junction and just 100yds or so off the old A10 (now the A1070).

Wikipedia reports “The A10 (in certain sections known as Great Cambridge Road or Old North Road) is a major road in England. Its southern end is at London Bridge in the City of London, and its northern end is the Norfolk port town of King's Lynn. From London to Royston it chiefly follows the line of Roman Ermine Street.”

This is supported by fragments of roman pottery and flooring that I dug up and had identified by the County Museum as a result of “The Big Dig” a few years ago. The big dig was an TV-led initiative to encourage people to dig a 1m by 1m test pit in their gardens and see what they found.

Indeed the history of this site may go back further as I also dug up a fragment of worked flint, suggesting habitation around her back to the stone age.

Now I don’t think the hedge goes back to the stone age, but I think it could go back hundreds of years. As such it seems worth saving.

Over the last few years this hedge has “thickened” with ivy. This ivy has strangled many of the old hawthorn bushes that are now very dead. Some of it is irrecoverable and will need replanting, but where I was yesterday a number of the plants survived, but only just.

So I carefully, and at some cost to my own skin, I cut out huge ivy stems piece by piece and then wove the remaining, sprouting hawthorn branches over the gap. It is now quite bare, but I hope and believe that it won’t be too long before the foliage starts filling the holes, but we shall see.

As I have said before, it is at times like this that my mind wanders and I guess it was no surprise that I saw in the hedge an allegory for change.

At the start the hedge looked thick and full, creating the barrier that a hedge should and looking healthy. Once I cut away the surface leaves. I found a tangled mass underneath. A mass that was strangling the essence of the hedge and at the same time creating a strength that hid the damage it was doing.

I also found that the mass of ivy had become a place that captured old leaves and stems into a dense, dead collection of debris that as well as creating a near solid barrier, was also depriving the real plants of the light they require to live.

In the spirit of the necessity to be cruel to be kind, I cut out something like 80-90% of the hedge’s mass, but what is left are the remaining parts of the old hedge, now with a chance to thrive again. I did leave some old, dead hawthorn stumps to provide some temporary infrastructure around which the healthy shoots can grow until strong enough to support themselves.

The hedge is now full of gaps, barely creating a barrier, but it will grow and fill and be a better hedge.

There seem to be a lot of parallels there with many business change undertakings I have experienced. Either way I think I did something good.

If my work is unsuccessful and we need to replant this section too, I will look forward to checking the base of the hedge first. It is under hedges such as this that things have been discarded and hidden along the ages and I wonder what secrets this one may hold.