We did something at the weekend that was long overdue. We finished cutting down the dead ivy that had been smothering one of our trees, and in the process discovered what a good thing it had been for the rhubarb.

Our rhubarb has never been particularly happy where I planted it alongside the chicken run. I had thought that was because it was a bit too dark there, but it seems now that it was more to do with the fact that the ivy was robbing it of all of the moisture in the ground.

Now this ivy is very old. It was here before I bought the house four and a bit years ago, and probably predates my ownership by a good ten years at least. Down at the root of the tree around which it had wrapped itself it was a good four inches across and more like a trunk than a frond.

So, seeing as it was stripping the tree of all of its leaves I made the decision to cut through the base of it a couple of months ago, and came to regret that decision a few weeks later. The tree seemed to be failing at an ever quicker rate with the leaves falling off all over the garden.

Except they weren’t the leaves of the tree – they were the ivy, which had so completely covered the tree for six feet of its height that there was no tree to see apart from the part that stuck out from the top.

It’s taken two weekends of chopping and trimming to uncover the tree again, and although it’s a bit of a silly shape right now it’s already responding well to the killing off of that horrible ivy. The part that sticks up from the top is flourishing, and there are beautiful red berries appearing all over it, which we haven’t seen before.

The biggest reward, though, is the rhubarb that sits at the bottom of the tree, and which has seemingly come back to life. So late into the season it’s sprouted some good strong stems and its leaves are as broad and lush as we could have hoped. We may get get a crumble this year, and next year holds out great promise, I can feel it already.

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