Thanks for the farmer's perspective, but it's actually the opposite. This is a grotty 6000m² bulge at the back end of his 64ha field, on which he planted a load of new oaks because he had to replace two lines of old oaks that he knocked. He's since had them re-planted twice because whatever he's done (or rather his contractors - he's a landowner, not a farmer

) the trees don't want to grow. My self-seeded oaks are twice and three times the height, and ten times the number.
I am wary of any request being turned down for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits of the proposal. My biggest concern in that regard is the continued presence of my felled oak trunks (originally his) on land owned by the council that stop a tractor from keeping the hedgerow tidy, and that hedgerow is the boundary of another one of his fields. Dealing with that is on the To Do list, but just now there are more things being urgently added to the List than coming off.
