THERE comes a time in the life of every garden when the most useful tool in the owner’s armoury is a chainsaw. A newly arrived purchaser may take such fright at what he has acquired that the only way to erase the previous owner’s neglect is to clear everything away and start again. Without determined action, famous gardens such as Heligan, Cornwall, and Aberglasney, Wales, would never have been restored. Naturalised Rhododendron ponticum certainly calls for strong and determined action—the phrase that military men recite when they are called upon to kill their enemies—and so, too, do over-enthusiastic suckering shrubs, such as Rhus typhina (with such glorious autumn colour) and Cornus stolonifera (the dogwood with colourful stems in winter).
‘Digging out is when the hard labour begins’
Mark that word ‘stolonifera’. It means sending out new stems from underground roots, far away from the parent
