Longleat's hedge maze gets a makeover
It takes a huge amount of work to get the world's largest hedge maze in good nick!
The maze is made up of 16,000 English yew trees, covering an area of 0.6 hectares with 2.8 kilometers of pathways.
That means it's a massive job to give it a tidy-up, which the gardeners at Longleat do each spring and autumn.
The latest pruning is just about completed, taking the team of six a total of eight weeks to do all of the clipping.
Each of the hedges is two metres tall, so the gardeners need to use a combination of platforms and ladders to reach the top.
Head Gardener Jules Curtis said:
"It's got to be one of the biggest jobs in horticulture. There's a team of six of us and part of the reason it takes so long is we can only have access when the maze is closed to the visitors.
"At this time of year we tend to just neaten up the sides, which may have been damaged by the passage of visitors, as well as cut the top to make sure it's a uniform height throughout."
Despite that really long time for the maintenance, completing the maze itself is much quicker.
The average time for visitors to get around it is between 15 minutes and an hour.