A COUPLE have created an incredible 7ft high maze in their back garden which takes days to cut – and there’s only one way out.
Richard Bushby, 71, and his wife Sandra grew the mind-boggling full-size maze behind their three-bed semi.
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The 85 sq ft creation is based on the yew maze at Hever Castle in Kent – the childhood home of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn.
It features 750 Leylandii trees and 16 tonnes of gravel along a quarter mile of pathways.
Richard – whose surname suits his creation – used to run a commercial nursery on the two acres of land that is now his spectacular garden.
He designed the intricate maze before finishing planting the fast-growing trees in the late 1990s with the help of his wife Sandra.
And Richard revealed that the massive maze takes days of work to cut.
He said: “They’re now about 7 feet tall now. They are solid and shaped so taking care of them isn’t too bad. It only gets trimmed once a year in July.
“It takes four or five days to cut it with a petrol hedge trimmer, then three days to rake it up and wheelbarrow it out – and of course there’s only one way in and one way out.”
Richard, from Sidlesham, near Chichester, West Sussex, opens the puzzle-shaped network of paths and hedges to the public once a year to raise money for charity.
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He said: “You can get lost in it. We have ‘spectators’ standing on a folding table in an area where they may yell instructions to those spinning in circles.
“Kids run around it in no time, but some adults have bigger problems.”
Richard added: “The area where our maze now sits was previously barren.
“Instead of planting more grass we decided to do something else with it and a maze came to mind.”
The couple’s maze is the same size as the famous maze of Hever Castle, Kent, built in 1906 by William Waldorf, then the richest man in America.
Richard and Sandra will open their garden, which also includes a woodland glade, pond and wildlife area, to the public on July 31.
It will help raise money for the charity Perennial, which helps people who work in the garden and their families .
Entry is £3 for adults and free for children under 15.
