Bramble commiseration/advice

[Gardeniafleur]

Just starting to clear a side of our garden that was a wall of bramble last year.

Any advice? Other than thick gloves and tough it out? We only bought the house in the summer and it was just too dense and thorny to tackle then.

About 15-20ft deep and all along the bottom of a wide site. Remnants of an old garden beneath. Lots of azaleas, rhododendrons, hydrangea and bedraggled escallonia emerging.

Especially difficult is how to get the bramble roots up without using glyphosate? Most are diggable (we accept that this will be a several year project!) but some of them have cleverly grown in amongst the azalea roots etc.

Copper nails?

Having tackled a brambly allotment, all I can offer is get the thickest gloves money can buy. It sounds like it will be fun discovering what emerges.

I've just been allocated a brambly allotment too! So as such no advice, but lots of sympathy. ( So far, I've employed loppers and good thick gardening gloves)

Oh, and trying to stop the blasted thing spreading any further, pulling it up whatever it arches over and touches the ground, before it can root too deeply.

Oh blast, just what we are doing then! It is kind of exciting though, it is insane that we bought this house with a huge deep border that no one else apparently wanted! The azalea tree was obviously once quite on its own on the lawn and in two days in rain and bad light we have restored it to being 'on the lawn' (it's actually all mud though after the root dig up).

I'm assuming as brambly allotment holders that you are not using any chemicals either - tell me how you get on! Or if you're finished, did they try and come back?

@pickingdaisies my only good advice that I do have, is START NOW, ours are already putting out buds and I know from having got the house in the summer that they're capable of growing a foot and a half a week. We had to get tree surgeons in to clear other parts of the site, but since we are trying to keep as many of the underlying trees here as possible, we have to 'delicately' disentangle them ourselves, I don't think you could even find a landscaper who would take it on for us!

I was on a list for an allotment until this dream property and garden came up! What are you hoping to grow?

Ooh! I can relate, we're two years into a full house and garden renovation. The garden was once well loved and has beautiful mature shrubs but unfortunately the brambles were left to grow for at least a decade.. some must have been forty foot long and as thick as my wrist.. covering the full half an acre garden..

Best advise is to cut every bit of bramble you see weaving through the other plants even if there's no hope of pulling it out there and then. There's nothing so rewarding as when you finally get to the other side and that piece just falls down. Cutting all the stems also means they start to dry out quicker and are much easier to remove once a bit brittle. As for pulling the roots I find it impossible in summer but in really wet weather like this and with thick gloves you can normally wiggle them out, those that are truly entwined in roots of wanted plants I cut as much as I can below the soil and hope that's enough!

@spudsuliked that is really great advice, thanks. We have been dithering a little bit over whether to get alll of the line 70% done or completely eradicating them from one small bit (husband is digging the roots that can't be wiggled). I think as you say pulling all the visible bits now (some are about twenty-thirty feet, haven't had any of forty yet but can dream...!) is the best plan. I can't even figure out how long the garden has been neglected for, there are quite a lot of saplings that have seeded themselves and grown into quite big trees, we are leaving the nicest of these (and will replace others with nature-friendly varieties)... it's just extraordinary. I think maybe it has been left for twenty-thirty years. It was let out for a long time and I think they just cut the lawn to the vague perimeters.

It is such hard work but sooooo satisfying at the same time! We can't even see to the back of the garden yet, it's extraordinary!

@spudsuliked I've just reread your post and THE WHOLE HALF ACRE was covered in brambles? wow! You must be a de-brambling expert by now!

You don’t need to remove roots. If you get to the base of the bramble, there’s a sort of “crown” from which all the shoots grow. As long as you cut under this, they won’t regrow. No need to dig through the soil like for ground elder or couch.

Most satisfying way is to find a base of a shoot, cut and tug. Much more satisfying to pull out brambles 12ft at a time

Get yourself some ammonium sulphamate, dilute 100g per 1 litre of water and apply it in spring when new leaves emerge.
It's a perfectly safe herbicide that breaks down into harmless chemicals, but you should not let the solution get into a water course.

We have loads in our garden (none in my allotment meecifully). Some are enmeshed in shrubs and some are rooted in tiny gaps between our shed and the neighbours fences. We've never totally eliminated them but they are under control, in fact one patch I control in order to get a blackberry harvest. I agree with watching out for them arcing out and burying their tips to spread, just cutting out as much as you can where they are embedded in other shrubs and getting your fork under the crown of roots to try and cut it off from beneath. Any new shoots you see popping up in cleared areas use a daisy grubbing tool to wiggle the roots out. Really heavy duty gloves (we've got some super thick suede gauntlets that came with our multifuel stove which are good). Be careful when dragging long pieces out of shrubs that they don't spring out and catch you across the face.

I'm on it, Gardenia! I'm not sure of my capabilities yet (arthritis in my hands) so I'm thinking fruit bushes, kale, courgettes, runners and tomatoes, and things that I can't grow in my North facing garden with calendula and the like to cheer me up. First task though is to confine the bramble to the border and try to eradicate the bindweed ( it's through all the beds, I'm considering a single application of glyphosate and then digging up any survivors)

@ExquisitelyDecorated yeah, I don’t think we’ll ever completely eradicate them but getting them under control would be good, I think there’s a point where you just need to be able to see how you’ll enjoy the garden without sleeping beauty’s thicket staring at you.

My allotment is full of them. I've cut them back so many times but they always creep back. The main roots are behind the shed and a structure built by a previous owner. If there weren't hedgehogs on the site, I'd be ruthless with the chemicals!

What we did was to chop them all down, just get in there and start hacking. Pulled up as many roots as we could then put a couple of layers of thick weed membrane down and covered in a thick layer of mulch. Then a year later we went back in, dug out as many of the weakened roots as we could and forked the mulch through. We still get a few breaking through here and there but get them out as soon as we see them.

Last winter I tackled a bank of brambles which grew with ferns mostly, thick gloves secuters and just getting as much out as I could. I haven’t been up the bank yet to check this winter if it’s still under control.

But I also had a smallish flower bed that had been neglected for years, also full of brambles. After much clearing I planted it up with shade loving plants which have filled out and taken over, so hardly any bramble has come back 💪🙌

This is a very aptly timed thread. We also inherited a bramble patch garden, and stupidly didn't do anything about it for the first year and let our chickens free range thinking they would remove some of it for us. They didn't. We have now moved our birds to another bit of garden that is becoming the orchard and I've started tackling the bramble banks.

We have an acre and I have worked out that roughly half of it is brambles. So far I've cut back loads but it looks awful now with just woody stumps sticking up everywhere and I don't think I can dig them all out, I'll be there forever. As the areas we are currently tackling will just be lawned over, I'm tempted to cut the stumps flat to the ground and drop a tiny bit of engine oil on each stump to try and kill it off. Not very environmentally friendly or what I'd normally do but feels like the only option at the moment!
You all have my sympathies.

If you don't dig out the roots they will keep re growing
We moved into a house a few years back,no idea how long the garden had been untouched. We lived there 6 weeks before we could physically get down the garden
Moved here, because of the garden, imaging being detached,no neighbours gardening problems. Wrong!! The brambles were so big, some 4inch diameter stems had smashed the fence
DH dug out a huge amount over 10 years. Younger,fitter,etc neighbours don't touch them,so the ones growing "their" side,we have to cut back monthly,when they come over. I have ruined countless clothes, cutting the damn things,and them falling on me

I've been restoring a very overgrown neglected garden. My advice for brambles is as others have said - just get in there, chop any long bits, and don't worry if you can't pull them out - they'll be easier once they're dead. Then pull as many of the roots as you can. And don't worry if you don't get them all the first try, just persevere and you'll get them eventually.

And it is really rewarding - it doesn't take long to really start to see the garden that once was. It's worth it

I tackled my brambles by cutting them as much as I could manage.

Still had two sections left over autumn/winter so decided to cover them. Used an old tarp weighed down with spare logs. The other section I dumped branches from an overgrown privet hedge. Piled them up thickly. There was ivy as well as brambles so for me it was worth a go covering them. These sections were far enough from the house that we couldn't see them.

This year I removed everything and after cutting back the weakened and dead brambles and ivy I had a load of bluebells come up which was a lovely reward.

I got some brambles this summer trying to come back but it was so much easier to remove them. The ivy is an ongoing battle. Now that my hydrangea has dropped its leaves I can see some brambles around the base so will need to go after those soon.

I had very thick gloves but found using another thinner pair inside those was the best protection.

We have debrambled half an acre too and I would strongly advise that you don't properly totally clear areas unless you have a plan for what is going back in them or you will end up in a never ending war. We have put a few beds in and sown some grass seed but we don't have the money to plant everything up yet and so are focussing on letting things stay a bit wild whilst we plan what we are doing and slowly save some pennies.

It’s going well!

I have the big gauntlet gloves people have recommended and thinner gloves inside - working well!

I am finding having cheap (but actually quite good!) secateurs from Lidl and cutting the mad roots that go around the root clumps is the best solution to getting the roots out. Still plenty to dig out but actually starting to feel so pleased with the results.

So far we have two azaleas, a rhododendron, some hydrangea, escallonia, I think what is called Lecesteria (is this quite invasive? Seems to be quite thuggish!), an old rose, and some currently unidentifiable shrubs.

Exciting!

@Geneticsbunny

We have debrambled half an acre too and I would strongly advise that you don't properly totally clear areas unless you have a plan for what is going back in them or you will end up in a never ending war. We have put a few beds in and sown some grass seed but we don't have the money to plant everything up yet and so are focussing on letting things stay a bit wild whilst we plan what we are doing and slowly save some pennies.

This is really good advice! Right now we are restoring an old garden, so the lawn is there and the remnants of what I think would have been a line of escallonia hedge with some shrubs in front of it is there. Brambles had grown all amongst the hedge and shrubs and was strangling them and starting to really encroach on the lawn. Hopefully they all recover a bit!

Just thinking what might work for you in the short term… do you like any of the modern/trendy hydrangeas? I bought a vanille fraise one and found it grew really well in my last garden, and was able to take lots of cuttings from it which all ‘took’. So you could easily get a good row of shrubs within a couple of years for not much outlay.

Do you lot want to come and do my garden,LOL. Satisfying,nooh,we had 100ft of brambles coming over from nextdoor, ruining our garden,shed roof, green house, really difficult to physically get at never mind remove. You can obviously cut them back to then remove,but if you just prune them,they respond like roses, grow 10 fold.

Used a petrol strimmer with a mulching blade (e.g. Oregon 295504-0) not a cutting blade to clear half acre or so of brambles in couple of hours. Doesn't clear roots, obviously, but obliterates stems/leaves in situ (so nothing to get rid of) and does really knock them back. That was two years ago; new growth tentative and easy to deal with. Have successfully used same tactics since in other areas. However, realise that not everybody has equipment. Perhaps if doing it by hand gets too hard, borrow strimmer or ask somebody to take this approach and do it for you. Brambles can be beaten, but price of victory is eternal vigilance.

We have ground elder, bindweed, docks and ivy. To be honest compared with that lot I find our brambles quite easy, I don't mind them or nettles so much - but obviously don't have them on the scale you do! They're more satisfying and easier to get rid of then some weeds I think - and if you leave them you get blackberries.