Hedge fun: A pyracantha gets the boot in Anna Pavord's garden but what's going to replace it?

We have an infinity lawn at our house – great for the view, not so good for footballs. Over the precipice, lurking in thick strands of nettle, lie all the footballs we have ever possessed. We haven't lost a child yet, but children have more common sense than they are ever credited with.

The steepness of the site at our place (a 20-metre drop from top to bottom) means that we are always fighting for flat ground. When we first arrived, we levelled off the sloping lawn in front of the house, which ends now in a stone retaining wall, 45cms higher than it was before. Below that, a narrow path leads along the back of the retaining wall, the path itself retained by a bulging double row of gravel boards.

On the far side of the path, we inherited a pyracantha hedge, which effectively marked the boundary of the gardened bit of the garden. Beyond the hedge, the land drops very steeply to the end of our property where another path wriggles through a wild territory of hazel and blackthorn, ivy, snowdrops, wild garlic and those football-garnished clumps of nettle.

I never liked the pyracantha hedge, but it provided a useful buffer. We will never garden the area beyond it. I like the wilderness as it is, especially in these early months of the year, before the nettles get tall and rank. But I don't especially want to see this wilderness from the lawn and the hedge blanked it off. At least, in bits. When we arrived, there were already some biggish gaps in it and more bushes have died since we have been here. The hedge must be at least 30 years old, judging by the size of the trunks. But pyracantha makes an unkind barrier. It grows too fast and, being so thorny, is hell to clip.

So earlier this year, as yet more bushes failed to green up, we decided to get rid of the whole thing. Kevin, who comes here one day a week, said we needed a winch. Otherwise it would take him an entire day to dig out just one bush. So for £18.11 (including VAT) we hired a T35 type Turfor winch which can handle a three-ton load and a cabled wire sling two metres long, capable of handling six tons. It's a wonderfully practical, low-tech bit of kit – no engine, no noise, just a handle that you pump from side to side to tighten up the winch cable. Between them, Kevin and a friend got out the whole hedge – 24 metres of it – in a day.

The carnage was hideous, but we could pile up most of the rubbish on a spare piece of ground, leaving the path below clear. It was obvious, once the hedge was gone, that the bulging gravel boards would scarcely last another season. Bits of the path were weeping out from under them and finally I understood why this path between lawn and hedge had been so difficult to maintain. While the whole stretch was churned up, I decided we might as well add to the chaos and replace the boards. But not with more boards. Something stronger was needed to hold the ground in place.

In an earlier piece of work, Kevin had used wooden sleepers to make steps leading down to this path and, being so much stronger than boards, sleepers seemed an obvious choice to retain the area. We got in seven at £21 each and half a ton of scalpings (£17.19) to bed them on; that was enough to do the first 11 metres of the path. The only other things we needed were two bags of 100mm nails (£2.88 each) and four half round rails (£4.54 each), which Kevin cut to length and banged in to retain the sleepers.

Since that first push, we have been busy in other parts of the garden and still haven't finished putting in the new sleeper edging. But I have had plenty of time to think about the hedge. First, we needed to decide whether we were going to replace it. Or leave the lawn, as it is now, hanging in space, with the drop below it. From the house, this looks terrific, as there is now a clear view out beyond the lawn, over the treetops to the pastures beyond.

But from the edge of the lawn itself, you see the short view, not the long one. After wandering about on the lawn at various times of day, approaching the little path from different directions, I thought that, on balance, we needed some kind of replacement for the pyracantha. Nothing too high. Nothing too formal. The pyracantha we inherited had been clipped in the traditional way with straight sides and a flat top. I fancied something more bulbous and billowy, something that wouldn't meet you flat on and stop the view over the valley, but a more notional barrier that would allow the eye to swoop like a bird over it or through it with clear passage beyond.

Holly was my first thought, partly because it would shake hands so amicably with the landscape beyond. We have lots of holly trees around us already and I love it. But the little path it would grow alongside is very narrow and we had already been pricked and scratched enough by the pyracantha. Yew, another native, would create too tight a barrier, even if we scooped the top into the roller coaster curves that the Dutch designer, Piet Oudolf, has made so popular. But that would be too self-conscious a statement here. Our whole aim is to slot the garden as seamlessly as possible into a landscape which, whatever I do, will always outclass my efforts.

Finally, I decided on bay (Laurus nobilis). Most of the older houses round here have big old bay trees close to the front door. They stop witches slipping in when you are not looking. And, although the lollipop bays I planted along the back of the flower garden got slightly burnt by frost this last, hard winter, the huge bay tree in our yard was scarcely singed. Unfortunately, it doesn't seed about like the bay tree in our old garden did.

So later this summer (August or September) I must take cuttings from it, lots of them, lateral shoots about 10cm long, pulled off with a heel and set in the cold frame in sandy compost. If I'm lucky, they will have rooted by this time next year and I can move them on into individual pots. After another year, they should be big enough to plant out. For bay, spring planting is better than autumn. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the view.