Sometimes you just need help.
I have been eyeing the grapevines that envelope the pergola for months. Last summer they cast a Stygian gloom rather than the dappled shade for which they had been planted and, to be fair to the vines, had provided for many years. There really is nothing lovelier than sitting beneath a pergola draped with grapevines on a hot day but as every grapevine harbours a desire to take over the world you really must prune back every year. If you neglect your vines for a year or two as I did then they will cover the pergola so completely that not a hint of sunlight will penetrate that suffocating canopy.
Those rows of grape-vines seen on foreign holidays and increasingly in our own countryside have arrived at their neat shape through ruthless pruning and I’m anything but ruthless. Still, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that these vines must be taken back to a bare structure and there is no-one better than my friend, Sue to tackle the monsters. We spent most of one short winter day taking the vines back with Sue, pictured here up a…
