I've never met a gardener yet who doesn't like a good bonfire'...

The words of a distinguished QC who was my boss for over two years.

I have to admit he is right, although I do feel a small sense of guilt spurred on by the words of Lawrence Hills the founder of the HDRA recently re-branded Garden Organic. He was against the burning of vegetation, often an unnecessary activity when composting is a better alternative, but also the environmental impact that the noxious gases produced ultimately have on the environment. Hills wrote some fantastic paper back books on organic vegetable gardening that are well worth keeping an eye out for (charity shops are often a rich source).

There are times however when the quantity and woodiness of the material you produce cannot be composted without the kinds of processing facilities only found in places like Kew Gardens. Massive chippers the size of small trucks, sieves that can sort half tonne loads at a time and a handy JCB dedicated to the job of solely turning heaps of fermenting matter the size of small Victorian semis. The attack this past week was on several very established clumps of Choisya ternanta a superb semi-evergreen shrub with pungent foliage that makes an excellent specimen. However, when a major element of your terrace garden is concealed by this plant, drastic action has to be taken. If this were a different situation I would try and save the shrubs, however with the scale of the clearance job ahead in the garden bold decisions have to be made.

The very front of the lower terrace is one of the most badly eroded and damaged areas of the formal terrace. Almost everything you see from the lowest steps is in a poor state. This part of the garden layout is very dramatic. The steps leading down and around the pillared fountain room forms the first glimpse of Mawson's terrace. Packed with Edwardian pomp and ceremony. Due to the nature of the complexity and intricacy of the major structural pieces, it poses some technical difficulties. These obstacles will have to be worked to a certain extent during the restoration work.

Once the Choisya had been cleared, yet more of the structure so integral to the gardens at Rydal was revealed (but also the extent to some of the damaged stone work) It's a fantastic moment when parts of a garden are revealed after years of concealment, none more than Rydal's dramatic arrangement of geometric terraces.

The clearance work is going to take several ruthless days along the front of the main wall. There are around 25 large mature Rhododendron trees that we will be thinning and pruning to expose the upper terrace walls and terracotta pots that punctuate the gardens boundary. I would urge any anxious regular visitors to Rydal that the plants being removed /reduced are being carefully assessed before I or one of the team here take a saw to the bark