Letter: ivy is the Japanese Knotweed of the hedgerows and trees

DEAR SIR

I couldn’t agree more with E. Jennings (letter in a recent Irish Farmers Journal) – there is not a hedge or a tree that isn’t covered with ivy no matter where you travel around the roads of Ireland, it’s evergreen with ivy.

The only place that ivy is controlled is where people did not partake in REPS or GLAS schemes.

While those schemes have great advantages, this is one huge disadvantage which in a very short time will denude our countryside of vital hedgerows and trees that are the lifeblood of bird life for both nesting and food in the winter.

Ivy is the Japanese Knotweed of the hedgerows and trees of Ireland.

I have been laying a hedge for the GLAS scheme and it’s a nightmare trying get the ivy out of the hedge I’m laying and more often than not, the bushes have been killed off by suffocation.

One part of the hedge which had furze, or whins as they are called in some parts of the country, is completely killed off and has long gaps in whitethorn.

I fear for the parts that were done five years ago as they are green with ivy. If they are topped now, the ivy will just thrive.

I filled in gaps with whitethorn plants and sowed them through black plastic – now I see it has covered over the plastic so it’s a race against time.

Before any of those schemes were heard of, nature controlled the environment, livestock kept it at bay.

Those experts and bureaucrats don’t know everything. If something isn’t done soon about the problem we will have more than ash dieback – our countryside will have no hedgerows and no birds.