The Bramble Bush Fight

I have lots of Bramble in my garden.

I have so much, you could call it a forest.

I live in a rural area that would have been part of the New Forest many decades ago. Bramble is a natural part of my environment.

Brambles have some benefits

• It feeds wildlife,

• It produces blackberries, which are often used in jams,

• It can be used to create wines and other drinks.

On the negative side, brambles can be a pain in your garden.

• They can grow wild, become rampant, and they can stop other plants from growing.
• We live in a house where the people before us had difficulties looking after the garden because of illness.
• We have struggled with our brambles for many years. We have cut them down, but they grow back.

We dig them out constantly. However, they grow in the toughest garden area which is made up of hard soil on top of mesh, brick, and cement, making it harder to cut them down. If you have the same problem, you will need to get rid of these as bramble can root straight through them.

In addition, they grow through the wire fencing that separates our garden and under a neighbour's garage.

I heard someone say they don't grow in grass and prefer sunny areas.

This is not correct.

My brambles also grow in the grass areas of my garden.

They grow in both sunny and shaded areas.

• I am using a brush cutter and Secateurs to cut them down.

• I bring them down to just the stalks.

• I dig deep using a garden fork (around 6 inches deep), and then I dig a trench around the stalk using a pointed spade. This helps me to find the root.

• I then use this nifty tool called a Root Slayer, which has blades running down both sides, and is great for detaching the root. If you twist this to both sides of the root, it will cut it. You can dig a hole under the root with your garden fork and lift. I use a root breaker to get them from under a garage which is on the boundary of our garden. This does not damage the garage, but it loosens them to the root, making it easier to get them out.

When digging up bramble, you will find loose stalks and shoots beneath the soil. You need to dig these out, too. You will also need to clear the dead branches, which may still be in the ground, and all the loose debris.

This can take a while depending on how much bramble is in your garden. It will take a good few weeks for us to clear our garden, as we have so much of it, plus a lot of debris.

I have tried brushwood killers, but they don't work and can be dangerous to wildlife. Now, I prefer to do mine by hand.

You will have to repeat the process after clearing because some bramble will grow back.

We are finding that when we are consistent with this method, we manage to keep regrowth under control, and as we dig out and cut, the bramble seems to shrink.

If you keep digging the brambles out and the roots, then over time they won't be able to grow back.

The trick is to destroy the root system.

Once you have cleared the area. You will need to plant something so that the brambles can't return.

Brambles like hard soil, sunny and shaded areas that have been abandoned or neglected for some time. They also like long, thick grass, as we found out after they grew in our garden after a down-pour of rain.

We are going to membrane the area, and wood mulch it. Once we have done that, we will put some potted plants there, because the area is not a good environment to plant seeds.

I will write a few follow-ups as we progress with our garden with pictures to this article, so please stay tuned, and thank you for reading.

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