Private with privet

Should the privet hedge go? At the moment it's rather ragged and sits on top of the four foot high wall. I cut it last autumn but not very well. The top's not straight, there's a dead patch in the middle and viewed from the house the bit against the wall is just bare sticks.

My gardening friend thinks it should go. She says it will drink up all the moisture in the soil leaving my new veg thirsty and sad. I'm worried about this. Although there is a tap in the front garden there's a limit to how much trudging around with a watering can that I want to do.

However, it has proved useful. Without it, the bus stop outside would almost certainly have an extra seat - rather higher and accessible only to agile teenagers. Our view of the stop itself, and the buses that arrive, would be rather too good without it. And of late it has had a role in crime prevention.

When I first put in my shallots someone, or something, started vandalising them. Each morning they had left their snug burrows in the soil and lay scattered about. There were no foot prints and no signs of digging. Each morning I was out there - in my work clothes - getting muddy hands slotting them back in, each time more firmly than the last. By day four this early morning gardening was losing its appeal. But day five - I spotted the culprit. I looked out of the window slightly earlier than usual and saw a dawn-chorus-blackbird tugging away at worms in the beds - and uprooting my poor shallots in the process.

That dead patch in the hedge came in awfully useful. Chopped and snapped it made a wonderful thicket of blackbird-proofing when stuck into the soil. It even looks good like that - natural structure with my fresh green leave starting to poke through.

So should I go the whole hog and remove the hedge? Some screen between the garden and the 159 buses would be good....but what?