Last week I bought a ‘value range’ pair of loppers from the garden centre, for a measly £12. I thought probably at that price they’d be a bit rubbish but I’d be able to decide if they were a useful tool, and maybe invest in a good pair once they broke. (I have a theory about buying tools for new activities and hobbies. If it’s new, don’t buy stuff. Once you’re invested in it, then you’re ready to invest money in it.)
Amazingly, my £12 loppers are really good. I can cut through live and dead wood up to about 3cm diameter. I have made piles and piles of branches. The garden is light and airy. Well, in the one area that I have managed to tackle.
Now I have a new challenge. What should I do with the piles of branches. There’s a lot.
We looked online last weekend at those dustbin type bins with holes in the bottom that you burn stuff in. What are they called? Garden incinerator.
Amusingly (worryingly) the first three pages of search results were all people asking if it was legal, people moaning about it, people saying it was legal, and people moaning about it. So now I have this concern – if I get a garden incinerator and burn the cuttings, will my neighbours be really annoyed and will this mean they are less clement towards me and my tinkering with the garden.
Up until now, I have bothered nobody, barring the business in the basement who I had to negotiate with to get access through the corridor under the building. We’re on good terms, and I want to remain that way. I am happy to share the garden with the other owners, that’s not a problem, but I really don’t want anyone dictating to me how I go about the work. So, I am just going about it myself, and not really involving anyone else, so that I can have my own way! If I start upsetting people by lighting fires, this might not last.
I need to have a think. I had hoped to do some burning this weekend, but maybe I need to decide if it would be better to cut up the stuff smaller and make a lot of bags up for the garden waste collection.
Either way, the loppers were a good buy, I’ll get to use them again for the bagging up!
As you are probably aware, the burning of garden/green waste via the use of a garden incinerator is not illegal in itself. However, if you were to cause a continual nuisance then the local council could become involved.
So just burn dry garden waste, not household waste (that is illegal) and I suspect you’ll be fine. I cant imgaine you are going to have it burning 8hrs a day for 7 days a week.
Alternatively, and the best option in my opinion, turn those pile of branches into something that nature can use. I’m thinking of a nice log pile house for insects and beasties to feed from and live in, maybe to odd hedgehog etc etc..
Yeah, I thought that it would be ok for the few hours that I would be burning stuff, but a lot of what I’ve got to burn is still green and so it sounds from the wise internet like it’ll be smokey, which I can imagine being annoying to other people. I think I’m going to do a combination of bagging up for the garden waste collection, and like you say, putting some at the sides of the garden for bugs and beasts to live in.