Den Rose needed pruning...

...so I went at it with a will today. It's looking a bit bare where it and its neighbouring ferns were but a good clear gave me a chance to get at brambles, a sapling plum tree that we don't want there and no fewer than four small sycamore trees. The rose and the ferns will sally forth next year with their usual gusto (and so will more sycamore seedlings!). The rose has put roots down in five places along the 9+ metres of ground it covers during the summer. I only prune it this severely every three years or so. Ground elder, yarrow, slender St.John's wort, and triteleia (the only thing I've planted, transferred from our old Oxfordshire garden) also grow among the ferns. It's quite a jungle in summer.

The width (over nine metres) of the den rose in summer
Main roots in middle of pic with gorse to the left and Escallonia to the left of that

The grass in the foreground is long because I'm waiting for the whorled caraway to set seed before I scythe it.

The original den rose rooting spot
which is just to the right of the gorse

Don't worry, we won't run out of ferns. I scythed the bank in the pic below just a couple of weeks ago.

We won't run out of ribwort plantain either – another bit of the front bank. I think I'll start referring to them as the fern bank and the plantain bank.