Dig them up. Burn the brambles (or take them to the tip - don't compost them.) Repeat. :)

Worked for us! It looks daunting, but you get there eventually..

Melanie

I agree. Dig them up. We had to do that in our garden (and discovered skip-loads of buried rubble to add to the fun). Digging enables you to get to know your soil, too.

Brambles can appear at first glance to be very daunting to get rid of, but with the right approach can be dispatched in one go. The good thing is once they are gone, they stay gone. That is, they are not like other perennial weeds like creeping thistle or bindweed which, despite your best efforts, can often persist for many years.

Cut down all the top growth first, with a slasher (like a machete on a long pole) or using a grass hook. Then methodically dig out and remove the stumps. That's it! You'll never see them again. But only as long as the stumps are completely dug out  if you keep cutting a bramble down, it only regrows with renewed vigour. Sometimes (this is very rare) if a thick piece of briar root is left in the ground, it will send up a sucker. These are usually quite weak and can be easily removed if they appear.

Having spent rather a lot of time clearing out so many brambles we half expected to find Sleeping Beautys castle (the entire garden front and back covering the bottom floor windows) I can attest to the fact that they don't grow back from the roots all that often and digging them out is pretty much the only way to get rid of them.

That's not to say that seedlings don't still pop up in abundance years later and need to be dealt with lest they grow into monsters months on. We pulled the originals out 9 or 10 years ago now and still have to deal with the offspring although it's easier to hand weed them when they are small than dig out the roots.

Are 'bramnles' quite similar to brambles but with not so many bees buzzing about them? I don't think we have any on this side of the lake.

We do have brambles though. Hellish greenbrier. I find they need very acid soil to thrive, so a heavy dosing of wood-ash every year helps discourage them and encourage weeds that crowd the brambles.

But mine have very nice 'jacks' (like gladioli) growing amongst them. Rather nice to destroy them too?