Replanting After a Privet
Removing a bush, defining new beds, replanting, and using fallen leaves as mulch.
I know this probably looks like nothing much now. It’s a garden in progress in the early days of spring. There’s a lot of work behind this patch of brown leaves and twigs. I’m really pleased with how it is shaping up. Were this a garden television show I would have cleared away all of the piles and debris, and the old, red cooler we’ve been using to collect all of the rocks we dig up before taking the photo. But if I had to wait to take photos of our progress until we’ve cleaned away the debris… well, that may never happen. I suspect that this garden will be in the middle of several overlapping projects for years to come.
The start of this particular project began with the removal of a privet bush. The tricky thing about plants is that what is perfect in the right ecosystem, can be a nightmare in another. Common privet (Ligustrum vulgare) is a British native where it grows wild in hedgerows and forests, offering food and shelter for birds. Here in Southern Ontario, Canada, it is an aggressive beast that readily self sows and spreads by roots and tipping branches, shading out natives in the process. The woodlot behind our yard is chock-full of it. When we moved here, there was an enormous monster-sized bush filling the space between the back corner of the house and our neighbour’s garage. Until this winter we had no reason to believe that the bush wasn’t rooted in our yard, until Davin went to cut it back and discovered the actual point of origin is a substantial crack in the neighbours’ driveway! Yes, a plant that big was supported by roots that had come up from cracks in asphalt. Now that is tenacious. A bird probably pooped some seeds there at one time and my guess is that the people who used to live in these houses liked the privacy the bush created and let it grow like Jack’s beanstalk until it became a many tentacled beast. Somehow, the plant had grown upwards and then sideways in an almost unnatural feat of balance and strength, which made it look like the centre of the mass was where the roots originated and not several feet behind. Why it didn’t just flop over from all that weight and take root in a second spot is beyond me. Instead, the whole mass was kind of hovering in space.
As a testament to its tenacity, when Davin went to dig up what looked like a few sprouts, we were shocked to discover elaborate root systems beneath. This plant wants to spread.
When we took possession of the house as owners last year, we did not want to deal with the privet until we had a plan in place for its replacement. This is because a large colony of birds use it as winter shelter and we didn’t want to deprive them without first offering the start of a new shelter. Since removing the bush, we’ve learned that the corner is quite windy, but the bush itself created a break wall as well as shelter out of the oppressively harsh winter winds we experience here near Lake Erie.
Once temperatures started to improve, we cut it back with the help of the neighbours and it is now down to stumps. Since the roots are growing on their side we have no say in their removal. Hopefully, it will be better managed in the future. We certainly won’t be allowing it to spread back into our yard. The amount of plant matter that was removed is unreal. We’ve processed about half and the rest is still sitting on the lawn like a gigantic tumble weed. Some of the birds have been hanging out in the tangle of long branches, which makes me feel a bit bad about the removal, but I know it’s for the best long term. It will take time for most of the plants we plan to put in to get up to size, so I’m adding a fast-growing elderberry in the hope that it provides some food and shelter for them in the meantime.
The ordeal portion of cutting the privet down wasn’t so much in the process of dealing with so much plant matter, or even in the work it will take to process it all. The real issue is in the plant’s pernicious nature. I have been super careful about getting every single piece of green wood off of the ground, even the tiniest bits. This plant will reroot anywhere it touches ground, and as I noted above, their roots grow and spread quickly. I suspect we will be removing rogue privet plants until time immemorial.
I want to make good use of any organic materials we remove from the landscape, so in this case I’ve been processing as follows:
I’ve been cutting out the longest, straightest whips (thin branches) and tying them into bundles to be used for basket weaving.
Most of the larger branches are being put through our cheap, electric branch chipper. The machine can only handle branches up to about 1.5 inches wide, so anything larger has to be cut in half or set aside to dry out in a place where it can’t reroot itself.
The chipper can’t properly chip thin branches and out compost isn’t hot enough to break them down appropriately. I do not want to risk adding them back to the landscape where they can take root, so they are being bagged and removed.
Defining a Garden Space
Now that the privet is out of the way, I’ve been working on defining the space and creating pathways. Recently, we were given a trailer full of oak tree leaf litter that the same neighbour was about to toss into the woodlot. Waste to someone else; gold to us. The first thing we did was lay a bunch of it down on the bare soil that used to be shaded out underneath the privet bush. The soil was pretty much bare so I did this to hold back weeds until we were ready to plant.
The bareroot peach tree ‘Intrepid’, that I ordered arrived a few days ago and I’ve already got it planted in place. ‘Intrepid’ is a self-fertile cultivar that is hardy down to zone 4/5. Peach trees don’t love wind so I plan to plant the corridor next to the house with tougher fruiting bushes that will eventually act as a break. Preparing the site was as simple as pushing back the leaves and digging a hole. The soil there is dry and well-draining and really the only place in the yard that a peach will tolerate. I didn’t have to plant on a mound as I’ve had to everywhere else. After planting, I pushed a very shallow layer of leaves back into place as mulch. Oak leaves are large and have a tendency to form a mat when wet that can suffocate anything planted beneath them. For that reason, I have not replaced them to the same thickness as I did when there was nothing planted. As mentioned above, I plan to put in an elderberry as a temporary, fast growing replacement for the privet that will provide some shelter and food for the birds. The cultivar I chose, ‘Ranch,’ is still a cutting, so it won’t be going in until June. It’s still too early to purchase perennials to plant underneath the peach tree, and the native seeds I winter sowed have either not germinated yet, or are still teeny tiny. So for now, I have no solid plans for what I will grow in the rest of the space. That will be determined based on which of my native seeds germinate.
How to Shred Tree Leaves and Use them as Mulch
I do have some perennials coming back up at what used to be the edges underneath the privet bush, so in that space I shredded the leaves down to bite-sized bits before applying them as mulch.
To do this I filled a big tote box about halfway with leaves and used an electric string trimmer to shred them up. There’s really nothing to it. Just turn it on and set it into the leaves, moving it around. You may need to toss the leaves and apply the trimmer a few times to get most of them chopped down. Perfection is not required—a few unshredded leaves won’t cause compaction issues.
If time is on your side, you can also set leaves aside to break down on their own. Either lay them down over an empty bed of exposed soil, or build a large, tubular cage from chicken wire and fill it up with leaves. The leaves will break down and be ready to use as a mulch next spring.
Pathways and Fencing
The last thing I have done in the area that used to be privet bush is define the beds and create a pathway between them that allows access to the side of the house. We’re installing a rain barrel there this year and I want to have access to it to water nearby beds and pots. Because leaf mulch is not safe to walk on (slippery when wet) I’ve been laying down the chips I’ve made from the larger privet branches and other weedy trees we’ve cut down. For now, I’ve laid down logs to define the sides of the beds, but I am slowly constructing low wattle fences to replace them and have already finished a small one set behind where the elderberry will go. A wattle fence is really just a fancy word for a rustic, woven fence. I’ll leave instruction on how to make one for another day, but if you happen to have my first book, You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Garden (2005), it’s explained on pages 18-19.
I’ll post an update on this in the summer once everything has leafed out and there’s more than just brown leaves and twigs to look at.