We have some lovely mature trees in our garden which are full of twittering birds and give the garden plenty of “vertical interest”.  Two of them are huge cherry trees which stand at ten metres.

don’t think they are special varieties as the flowers are very underwhelming. They are both very old and start losing their leaves from July onwards. One has a double trunk which looked like it could split. Then when a neighbour’s tree flung itself across the road in the dead of night, just missing any fences, houses and motorists, I decided to get some professional advice.

It was starting to rot at the base and was too close to the house for comfort.  We had to get planning permission which our tree surgeon organised for us. The tree is in the Wedding Flowerbed and we chose to leave about two metres of the two trunks rather than having the stump ground out. A clematis “Etoile Violette” had made it home the previous summer. I have another clematis in mind for the other trunk which I took as a cutting from one of my Mum’s.

It’s always sad to lose a tree but the contractors made light work of the felling and left us plenty of firewood which they logged for us.  Cherry burns well but it needs to be seasoned – preferably for a year so we will start using it next winter.  A log supplier also gave me this advice which was to split it while it is still green because it will be hard as stone once it has dried out.

The trunk segments are a good 40cm diameter so My Lovely Husband has his weekends sorted!