Finally removing last of the big trees around my house

[JOEPRO]

My house was originally built in 1974. It was extended a couple of times since that in the 80's and 90s and did have all very large and out of control trees to all 4x boundaries.

I'm talking a mix of fir trees and beech trees some of which were about 6 stories tall and 4 foot trunks at its worst.

Over the past 20 years I have been tackling these an area at a time and replacing them with laurel hedges and small ornamental trees.

The last area left which still has the old original trees is along my back boundary:



(About 40m long approx where the trees are )

They are about 12 foot thick on average from the timber boundary fence to the face of the trees.



There is a 1.8m high timber fence in behind which is in good condition only a few years old. The back of these trees have no foliage as my neighbours had previously cut the back out of them. This will help me now too.

I did plant laurel hedge saplings in behind these old trees about 2 years ago. They are still alive but not really growing as they don't get much light or nutrients due to the big trees.

Next Saturday I'll make a start on cutting these down. I'm not kidding myself how much work there is in this! I reckon about 6 Saturdays worth of cutting and trailering away to the dump just to get them down.

For the timber fence it has gaps in it and this is going to be a very bare boundary between me and my neighbours behind until the laurels mature over the next 3 years or so.

In the intermin I need to do something here to provide some vestige of privacy to me and my neighbours. I am thinking of stapling on some of that green privavy mesh stuff, any recommendations please?

 

[Kram]

I'm told there are very few, almost no big trees left in NI/Ireland. Have a photo of them?

 

[JOEPRO]

I'm told there are very few, almost no big trees left in NI/Ireland. Have a photo of them?

This is true yes, this is when I last topped these big trees at my house

 

[Smallfry]

Beech trees are great and slow growing, and good for wildlife. Conifers belong in Norway or wherever, and horrid things in a garden. Only thing worse than conifers is laurel. Not an indigenous plant and kill everything underneath just like conifers do. Also poisonous to grazing animals. Fast growing, so will keep you busy.
If you live in an ANOB or SSSI you will most likely be asked to remove them.

Neighbours will be pleased though, about the conifers going. More light, AND they can spy on you and your projects, and complain about it, and the noise from all those compressors ........

 

[Agroshield]

...6 stories tall...

Is that the height of the trees or what the lumberjacks do around the fire in the evenings?

 

[JOEPRO]

Beech trees are great and slow growing, and good for wildlife. Conifers belong in Norway or wherever, and horrid things in a garden. Only thing worse than conifers is laurel. Not an indigenous plant and kill everything underneath just like conifers do. Also poisonous to grazing animals. Fast growing, so will keep you busy.
If you live in an ANOB or SSSI you will most likely be asked to remove them.

Neighbours will be pleased though, about the conifers going. More light, AND they can spy on you and your projects, and complain about it, and the noise from all those compressors ........

Laurels are fantastic hedges for around a house. The have some acoustic value also, hardy, evergreen and you can cut them back hard and they will recover and fill back in unlike any conifer etc. I've heard people cry about them before but it's all nonsense if you ask me

There will also be ornamental trees with value for insects etc so will be fine in that regard. Besides that I live beside a forest so no shortage of trees in the area!

It will be a shock to the system for a few years when the trees are down but they have to go. All bare at the back and the front is way out over a kerb and very hard to maintain. They have large roots so they keep reaching for the sky again after being cut down to 20 feet tall or so. Every year I take trailer loads away from them.

Laurels will be kept tight to the fence and at a height that is easily maintainable.

 

[JOEPRO]

This is what behind the trees looks like. All bare trunks for the most part - a huge amount of growth up high not looking forward to the volume of stuff going to come out of this.



The laurels in there are doing surprisingly well given the conditions they are in.

I ordered what seems to be the heaviest gauge of this privacy stuff:




I will affix this with washers and screws to the fence for the first few years until the laurels get up a good bit taller. A 10m roll will get me started anyway to see if it's any good.

 

[JOEPRO]

I am also going to collect a 2800w shredder tonight that can handle up to 42mm branches. I will use that to create my own wood chips for the ground cover.

I will also need to hire a stump grinder when all are down in order to remove them to below ground level.

My saws at the ready also

 

[awemawson]

Laurel grows like a weed and as has been said it's poisonous to live stock - we've lost lambs to laurel.

A previous owner planted about 200 yards of the stuff as a noise barrier (we live on the A21 trunk road) and twice now a couple of twenty yard sections had to be re-planted due to SE Water digging up their pipes that run in our garden and yes it has settled in and regrown over maybe 5 years.

Same previous owners (bless them) planted 3/4 mile of leylandii down one of our boundries - they were 17-20 foot and we cut them down to 4'6" - leylandii burns beautifully

 

[JOEPRO]

Laurel grows like a weed and as has been said it's poisonous to live stock - we've lost lambs to laurel.

A previous owner planted about 200 yards of the stuff as a noise barrier (we live on the A21 trunk road) and twice now a couple of twenty yard sections had to be re-planted due to SE Water digging up their pipes that run in our garden and yes it has settled in and regrown over maybe 5 years.

Same previous owners (bless them) planted 3/4 mile of leylandii down one of our boundries - they were 17-20 foot and we cut them down to 4'6" - leylandii burns beautifully

Yes that would matter a great deal near or on a farm. I live in a town. No issue here and I don't intend to eat any of it myself.

I find that Laurel hedges grow slower than leylandi trees.

This is a laurel hedge of mine which I keep about a foot wide. Needs a clip again but quite easy to do when they are kept a manageable size.

 

[Keith 66]

When we moved into our house there was a laurel hedge 110ft long all the way down one side. It was planted when the house was built in 1924 & was7ft high & nearly as wide. It was pruned heavily but came back well. It was a major operation to cut it every year. Just disposing of the cuttings took forever as they would fill several hippo sacks. When we built or extension we had it all ripped out & to be honest dont miss it!

 

[Kram]

Only problem with laurel is it needs a sharp hedger, often if they are well worn commercial hedgers it will bruise the leaves more than cut them, but I suspect yours is nice and very sharp

All bare trunks for the most part - a huge amount of growth up high not looking forward to the volume of stuff going to come out of this.

Photo of the trees? It will tell us a lot.

They have large roots so they keep reaching for the sky again after being cut down to 20 feet tall or so. Every year I take trailer loads away from them.

Theres the problem, if they have been topped it will ruin the tree and cause greatly increased epicormic growth.

I will also need to hire a stump grinder when all are down in order to remove them to below ground level.

I've not used one but my buddie owns a couple. My experience is they are a pain and its often better to do as much as you can by exposing the roots and cut with cheap disposable chainsaw chains or sabre saw followed by another method, like a winch to pull it out.

The last three we did had a lot of concrete hidden and it was easier for me to cut around the concrete and divide the stump up into blocks, he smashed it out with sledge hammer.
The teeth are expensive so it often takes a while to prepare removing stones and digging around it if you want to keep them intact!

 

[8ob]

Conifers are bad news, after a few years they end up with nothing in the way of screen lower down. Best hedging/screening plant that you can relentlessy hack back without killing it off is a Thuja, you can cut that back to the main stem and it will come back.

Bob

 

[JOEPRO]

Only problem with laurel is it needs a sharp hedger, often if they are well worn commercial hedgers it will bruise the leaves more than cut them, but I suspect yours is nice and very sharp


Photo of the trees? It will tell us a lot.


Theres the problem, if they have been topped it will ruin the tree and cause greatly increased epicormic growth.


I've not used one but my buddie owns a couple. My experience is they are a pain and its often better to do as much as you can by exposing the roots and cut with cheap disposable chainsaw chains or sabre saw followed by another method, like a winch to pull it out.

The last three we did had a lot of concrete hidden and it was easier for me to cut around the concrete and divide the stump up into blocks, he smashed it out with sledge hammer.
The teeth are expensive so it often takes a while to prepare removing stones and digging around it if you want to keep them intact!

Conifers are bad news, after a few years they end up with nothing in the way of screen lower down. Best hedging/screening plant that you can relentlessy hack back without killing it off is a Thuja, you can cut that back to the main stem and it will come back.

Bob

Here is a better photo of them:



There are beech trees in there also but the fir trees have crowded those out to almost nothing.

The problem here is the trees are just too old, big and the front is now 12 foot out from the fencline. If I trim that too much they will die and no screening value then anyway. It's time for them to go and the laurels behind get growing and keep them cut hard back so they only take up a foot from the fence.

It will make a huge difference to the natural light levels at the back rooms in my house also. Will be the first time in 30 years that the sky will be visible from the Kitchen!

 

[Kram]

Oh, I was expecting this....

I'm talking a mix of fir trees and beech trees some of which were about 6 stories tall and 4 foot trunks at its worst.

6 stories tall 4 foot trunks!

 

[JOEPRO]

Oh, I was expecting this....

6 stories tall 4 foot trunks!

Out of context! To quote myself there:

My house was originally built in 1974. It was extended a couple of times since that in the 80's and 90s and did have all very large and out of control trees to all 4x boundaries.

I'm talking a mix of fir trees and beech trees some of which were about 6 stories tall and 4 foot trunks at its worst.

Over the past 20 years I have been tackling these an area at a time and replacing them with laurel hedges and small ornamental trees.

The worst offenders were beech trees in other areas of my house which at the time I hired a very large boom lift and we got them down a section at a time like that. Don't have photos it was years ago but they were huge trees.

This last section of the original trees left to the rear boundary have already been topped in the past and were not the largest trees either.

 

[jmp49]

I was going to say just leave the tree's, you will get shellshock without the coverage but you have moved beyond that.
My place had a lovely line of mature oak/beech and a few ash tree's giving us good privacy on one border, sadly just over the border into the local farmers land. He told me that he wasnt going to remove them when I asked, and I even offered to buy the tiny strip they were on, but instead he sold every tree on his massive acreage, including a historic forest he bought the month before and the tiny strip, to a commercial enterprise, and they arrived en mass with 60t 360's with forestry felling grapples with saws etc, and took out hundreds of 100+ year old trees in a fortnight, and tipped every single one into a massive wood chipper feeding into a never ending convoy of artic sized tipper lorries to make pellets apart from 10 (apparently so he could sidestep having to trigger some process needed to deforest a area), of the remaining he removed all the lower limbs from and dug round their roots to destabilize them and they are well in train of falling down and destroying power lines and fibre optic comms and properties. The idiots wanted to track all over my mown area of the garden and put the felled trees and waste on it and tried to take a few of my tree's on another border that he told them were his too, I had to properly kick off at the hired help and he got the enterprise out to stop this and the idiot told everyone I'd given him permission then withdrawn it! 100 years of cultivation and growth gone in a fortnight to give a few shekels. He gets ecology grants for his enterprise, its a joke.
My problem is that the strip where the tree's were is about 15ft higher than my garden, so whatever I plant has to get to 15ft before it even begins to provide coverage. And I have to have planning permission to put a fence up over 5ft tall. So I've just planted a load of conifers. I hate the amount of stuff that's on display now while things get going, and its ruined things for us outside because every fecker slows down for a gawk, including our sticky fingered travelling friends.
Having said that, now I read that laurels are poisenous for livestock, I'll put a few of them in the last few gaps.

 

[JOEPRO]

To show the impact of 12 foot wide trees on my back garden (12 foot on average, it gets slightly more and also alot less at one end)

Boundary is in red:

 

[Kram]

@jmp49 was that long ago? You need permission from the forrestry commision to remove any significant amount of trees. Big fines if you do it without and they could make him replant.

 

[arther dailey]

Conifers are bad news, after a few years they end up with nothing in the way of screen lower down. Best hedging/screening plant that you can relentlessy hack back without killing it off is a Thuja, you can cut that back to the main stem and it will come back.

Bob

appreciate the advice , looked up thuja , seems to be a lot of different types , any you would recomend for a say 2 metre hedge? cheers