counting the frost cost

I have a visitor coming to the garden soon - a tree surgeon with the usual nominatively determinate name and his gang of apprentices with ladders and pole loppers. They're taking out the back hedge overhang, but before they do that there are a few things to do. Tidying up before the tidy-up if you like. Mainly the things involve the Passion Vine, which is on the frost damage list from last week. Also on the list:

• Abutilon x 3 (all leaves frost scorched)
• Early Japanese Cherry (some blossom browned)
• Tree Fern (exposed fronds partly frost scorched)
• Fancy Fuchsia x 3 (plants appear completely dead)
• Roses (larger new growth frost wilted)
• Glossy fern (fronds snapped and flattened by snow)
• Etc.

Some of this is easily fixed - the roses, due a prune anyway, were quickly tidied - and the fern just need to loose their winter wrapping and have the wrost damage pruned out. Others aren't that important - the Cherry will bounce back. The Fuchsias, though, are galling, particularly as I'd been keeping them safe in the shed. But the wind swung round and blew straight through everything. There were Sweet Pea seedlings in there too -- and these I think I have saved, though they lost leaves.

Back to the Passion Vine. Although I want my overhang removed, I'd like as little disruption as possible to the creepers I grow up my neighbour's severe evergreens. To do this they need to be as separated and obvious as possible - without looking tidy, for I follow the principles of chaos-enough gardening, and neat lines and clear delineation are anathema to my garden.

So the process is as follows:

1. Draw out the withered and obviously dead stems, in sections.
2. Pull out vine tendrils into hanks and put them roughly where they belong (in this base, against a trellis or on top of an arch).
3. Draw out long tendrils of vine and use these to secure your passion vine into its spaces.
4. Cut away/pull up suckers from where they should not be (in this case, all over the greenhouse and under the arch).
5. Do a tidy-up pass through everything getting rid of fallen leaves, the worst of the winter-tatty tendrils, and doing extra weave and securing.

There's a sixth step too, that happens three days later which involves cutting out all the tendrils you killed while doing this - but that's strictly optional. At this time of year, the Passion Vine expects a lot of dead and damaged overgrowth, and uses it to shelter new shoots.

The other back-creepers can happily be hacked to the fence, though I'd like to avoid them being crushed out too badly, so I tidied back a clematis, a honeysuckle.

They'll be so happy when the overhang is gone and they finally all have light.