We live in an arboretum. I have by no means fully enumerated the number and variety of the trees. The property is infamous for the massive line of Leylandia that camouflages the house from the road (yesterday a visitor had to return to Ashford having driven past several times and failed to find us). The huge poplar trees that mark a far corner of the property are visible from elsewhere in the Elham Valley. A different corner is marked by willow trees. There is a majestic yew, and a tall and elegant silver birch. Several varieties of conifer are vying to attract the term pinetum. The mature sycamore outside the bedroom window was hacked back to trunk and a few limbs at some point last year. A horse-chestnut is reaching towards maturity. There are at least three dead trees, bare, gnarled and twisted, as though props in a production of Macbeth. Overgrown stands of hazel (awaiting pollarding), hawthorn and elder can be found in several places. I discovered an apple tree hidden in the Jurassic Park shrubbery. There remain many trees that I have not yet identified.
It is something of a jungle, with nettles two metres tall, and thistles with stems as thick as my arm. There are drifts of cuckoo pint which flick intensely poisonous sap into my face when I strim. The yew trees, the leaves and berries of which are also fatally poisonous, require some serious management. Some of the shrubs have thorns that would have not embarrassed the movie set of Jumanji. My wife found a spider in the kitchen: it was the size of a saucer. I shudder to think what reptiles live in the jungle.
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