INTRODUCTION

GENERAL INFORMATION

MY OWN OBSERVATIONS

CONCLUSION

Conclusion

Because ivy appears to have a slow creeping habit, people living in an area often do not realise what is happening. This is called 'landscape amnesia'. Trees and hedges are killed before they realize what has happened.

Dutch elm disease that devastated the magnificent English elm in the 1970s could not be stopped. Thank God it was just one species.

Ivy will climb all species regardless of age or place. But unlike the Dutch elm disease it can be controlled. Therefore we need not lose the big trees in Norfolk.

It is indeed a bleak landscape if the big trees all go within a short life span. With the proliferation of deer in the UK, it will be even harder to plant new trees.

Unless someone can think of some brilliant way of stopping ivy in the hedge rows, that is what they will be :- ivy hedgerows. Gradually to be blown over by storms. What is the expense of growing new hedges? Will landowners be able to get financial help from the government?

30-40 yr old ivy?	50 yrs ?

If a tree looks like these two, you can certainly save the one on the left and probably the one on the right. The one on the right may never have been much of a tree, but very old trees give much to the landscape. Like wonderful old buildings.

Hawthorn

When the magical spring & early summer come do you want the hawthorn to look

like this	or	like this?

Hawthorns can live up to 250 years- At 'Hethel Old Thorn' in the NWT's Nature Reserve, there is a thorn tree said to be 700 years old. In the 18th century, it had a circumference of 12 feet.

Wind-blown ivy beginning to fall	Top heavy hawthorn blown over

Monoculture of Ivy.

If you want to see what many of the woods will look like in 10-15 years or less, click on the maps below and take a drive.

Images produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Images reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

A choice of what we can look forward to in the silhouettes across the countryside, created by ivy.

It is of course possible to save the big trees. But it can only be done if the landowners decide to do it. What is the expense going to be, if in a few years there is one hell of a storm which blows over hundreds of top heavy ivy clad trees? Surely it is better to spend less now than the clear up cost of a terrible storm. It's called insurance. And you get to keep the trees.
I know one farmer who rescues 300 trees a year. It really is a matter of priorities and the realization that ivy is growing faster than ever before.

I do have suggestions on how to tackle this problem and would be very pleased for feedback and more information and ideas about ivy. Please email me Vivienne Mackenzie