Wrestling with a monster

Friday 8th April - A beautiful Spring day and the grounds are looking stunning.  The grass has had its first cut, the trees are coming into leaf and the tadpoles are swimming about in the pond.  Our 150 year old Wisteria, trained around three walls of the Coach House is just coming into bud, promising the best show of flowers since we rescued it a couple of years ago. But today it has to come off the walls so that the contractors can repoint the building. Colin, Tom and myself arrive ready to help David Redmore, landscape consultant extraodinaire. We set about cutting the ties and wires carefully and after a while the main branch on the cable end is free.  We hijack Kirsten, who is passing through the park and the five of us line up to man-handle the branch, feeding it through the gap in the hedge. Then its onto the main side wall, where the Wisteria is rooted - it has huge woody main branches and covers the whole wall.  It took a while to get all the ties and wires cut, but eventually we stand back as David eases it away from the building and we have a massive tangle on the grass. It was a bit like pic-a-stick trying to sort it out but eventually, stakes are hammered into the ground and we start to tie the branches together. David, sad that we will not see the flowers this year, has a flash of inspiration - lets make a living barrier  - at least we will have some flowers.  So we carefully tie it to stakes along the path - its about 30ft long! Once the building is finished we will start putting it all back and it should recover well over the next year or so!