The Garden Cottage Orleans Road Twickenham TW1 3BJ
The yew hedge consists of 3 yew trees and is located in front of the front door to the house, about 2 meters away from the door. Many branches are much closer to the house than 1.5 meters and some are touching the house. These trees are annotated on the plan as T3 and T4, however, T4 is actually 2 trees planted close together. We are not sure if the trees are actually protected under the TPO due to the fact that they have already been cut many years ago at a height of about 140-150cm from the ground and any new growth does not exceed 7cm diameter. Following the heavy pruning the trees did not recover well. They grew new branches mainly on one side but not the other, they also don't look very healthy overall and have a lot of dead branches. We are proposing to remove the poorly maintained 3 yew hedge including removing the stumps (fell to the ground and grind up the stumps). In order to mitigate the loss and add more biodiversity we are planning to plant a 52m hedgerow consisting of 14+ UK native species on the park side border of our plot and within the mix of trees we have planned for at least 25 new yew trees. This is annotated by the green rectangle on the sketch plan. The hedge will provide screening for the garden as well as food and shelter for wildlife. Other species in the mix will include hawthorn, bird cherry, goat willow, dogwood, dog rose, beach, hornbeam, holly, native honeysuckle, crab apple, hazel, blackberry, elder, field maple and perhaps others.