When we first moved into our house, within a few days, we discovered that the next-door neighbours were druggies! Unfortunately, in the UK, we do not have a disclosure law like some countries have, whereby the seller must tell the buyer that Mrs Miggins was murdered in the spare room or that your neighbour is a convicted loan shark. Fortunately, as it turned out, they weren't actually bad people; they just did things that were a little annoying, like shooting an old TV placed at the top of the garden with an airgun.
Originally, there was a half-height fence between us and their former home (they were evicted a year or so later), and they had an irritating habit of watching us over the fence, so I had a cunning plan to plant three leylandii, which I kept lopped at around seven foot high to form a barrier. The beauty of them is they grow really fast, and so within a short while, we had achieved a small amount of privacy. (About seven years ago, I had the fence panels behind the leylandii replaced with six-foot ones).
Fast-forward to about five years ago, and I noticed the two outside leylandii were dying. The remaining middle one struggled on, presenting patches of green here and there. It was only a couple of years ago the wife finally confessed that she had poisoned them by liberally pouring weed killer all around them! Not to kill the leylandii, but she was just fed up with weeding and got it in her head that weedkiller was the solution. It worked! But it also killed the leylandii, and so they sat for about four years until a week or so ago when I said to the missus that I was fed up of looking at dead twigs, and anyway, it was spoiling our garden and that I intended to take them out, a no mean feet either tbh.
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I'm fortunate to have a reciprocal saw and so cut them down, leaving a decent amount of stump to work with.
I could tell the wife was pretty agitated by the grey parts of the fence panels that had never been creosoted because, obviously, we couldn't get to them, so the immediate task was to get them painted before I was in the doghouse. The only problem was I couldn't find the colour the wife originally painted all the rest of the panels in. Of course, as a man, my logic says: "What does it matter? In a few years, nobody will see them!" My logic is obviously floored as the lighter shade is still aggravating her. 🤣
The first task was to clear the stones, and I decided to start with the stump nearest the patio as I guess the roots would have grown underneath it, thus making this particular leylandii are a right pig to remove.
There's one fortunate feature of leylandii: they don't have a tap root as such. This is a big root that grows straight down. Lelandii spread their roots out, but you still need to dig down a fair way, which is an utter pain as you dig between the roots with a trowel. Once I'd exposed as much of the root possible, I used the reciprocating saw to cut through it, a bit like severing the bonds that held it in place. I then whack the hell out of it with a 4lb lump hammer to loosen up the reaming hold the ground had on it before finally using brute force and the power of the legs to force it over and out.
Interestingly, the second one was harder to remove than the first. I suspect because it had more room to expand? I'd started on the Friday, and by now, it was late Saturday.
I took a day off Sunday but was back to the grindstone Monday and finally removed the last stump. My plan is to put a Hawthorn bush in there, although I'll have to wait until October for them to be available.
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A major project! Can't wait to see what your garden looks like next spring with the Hawthorne bush growing.
And tell your wife she is not alone. I used weed killer on some poison ivy that had begun to grow under a lilac bush. And then wondered why the bush was failing and finally dead.
What is it with women and poison? 🤣 🤣 🤣
https://www.historiamag.com/5-infamous-female-poisoners/
You see plenty of leylandii that grew much taller than they needed to be. You did well to get them out. A guy needs his power tools.
I kept them at 6ft high.
It killed me getting them out.
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