Hedgelaying - WikiHQ

thumb|upright=1.35|Hedge laid in Midland style

thumb|upright=1.35|A hedge about three years after being re-laid

Hedgelaying (or hedge laying) is the process of partially cutting through and then bending the stems of a line of shrubs or small trees, near ground level, without breaking them, so as to encourage them to produce new growth from the base and create a living ‘stock proof fence’. It is a countryside skill that has been practised for centuries, mainly in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with many regional variations in style and technique.

The first description of hedgelaying is in Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, when his army was inconvenienced by thick woven hedges during the Battle of the Sabis in Belgium. Hedgelaying developed as a way of containing livestock in fields, particularly after the acts of enclosure which, in England, began in the 16th century.

Today hedges are laid to contain livestock without the need for artificial fences, to maintain biodiversity-friendly habitats, to promote traditional skills and to enjoy the pleasing visual effect of a laid hedge.

Benefits

Creating and maintaining hedges provides:

livestock-proof barriers;
habitat for many species of wildlife
rejuvenation of existing hedgerows by encouraging them to put on new growth, and thus helping to improve their overall structure and strength;
control of flood risk, improvement in water quality and reduction in soil erosion;
weather protection for crops and wildlife; and
aesthetically pleasing screens to fields and gardens.

Theory and practice

thumb|Starting the pleacher with a pruning saw

thumb|Cutting the pleacher with an axe, enabling the stem to be laid and continue to grow in a hedge

thumb|Laying the pleacher, a crucial stage

thumb|upright|Sharpening a hedge stake. Bundles of stakes (left) and of binders (back) lie ready to use.

The theory behind laying a hedge is easy. The practice is much harder, requiring skill and experience. The aim is to reduce the thickness of the upright stems of the hedgerow trees by cutting away the wood on one side of the stem and in line with the course of the hedge. This being done, each remaining stem is laid down towards the horizontal, along the length of the hedge.

A stem which has been (or is to be) laid down in this manner is known as a pleacher or pleach. A section of bark and some sapwood must be left connecting a pleacher to its roots to keep the pleacher alive — knowing how much is one part of the art of hedgelaying. The angle at which the pleacher is laid is a factor in the build of a hedge. Hedges are built to a height to suit their intended purpose. The height and condition of the trimmed stool, known locally by names such as a stobbin, is vital as this is where the strongest new growth will come from. In time the pleachers will die, but by then a new stem should have grown, from the stool, from ground level. This takes from eight to fifteen years, after which, if the hedge has not been trimmed, the hedgelaying process can be repeated. Hedges can be trimmed for many years after laying before allowing the top to grow to a sufficient height to lay again.

Smaller shoots branching off the pleachers and upright stems too small to be used as pleachers are known as brash or brush. In most styles of laying, the brash is partly removed and partly woven between the pleachers to add cohesiveness to the finished hedge.

At regular intervals upright stakes are placed along the line of the hedge. These stakes give the finished hedge its final strength. Additional strength and a fancy effect is achieved by binding the uprights with hazel whips woven around the tops of the stakes, and cutting off the tops of all the stakes at the same height and at the same angle. The woven whips are known as binders or heatherings; they can be of any green wood such as birch, ash, or willow which will hold the stakes and tops of the pleachers down securely. The stakes and binders used in hedgelaying when properly used provide strength and stability to the hedge. Binders are not applied simply for visual effect, but in competitive hedgelaying, the appearance of the binders is often one criterion for scoring the work.

Traditionally the hedgelayer's tool was a billhook, supplemented with an axe. Nowadays professional hedgelayers often use a chainsaw on larger pleachers.

Local styles

Over the centuries, different areas developed their own distinctive styles of hedgelaying, based on local customs and also on the locally different requirements and available materials.

Midland style

Also known as bullock style. This hedge was designed to keep big heavy bullocks in their field. This style is mainly found in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire—traditional beef rearing areas.

Typical features of the style are:

Motorway style

A modern style described first in the TCV Hedging Handbook as "motorway style" has been developed. This style dispenses with heathering and, with a post and rail fence on the field side behind it, does not need to be stockproof. Often stakes are dispensed with as well, almost all the brush trimmed off, the pleachers cut short and then laid low into the post and rail fence.

Modern hedges also tend to leave more trees as standards within the hedge. There is also emerging interest in reviving older methods of using live stakes (crop and pleach style).

Outside the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom

thumb|Typical field boundary of red beech hedging (Fagus sylvatica) in the [[North Eifel in Germany]]

Netherlands

In parts of the Netherlands hedgelaying is practised, with styles distinct to that country. With all Dutch styles no stakes or bindings are used. One of every three or four standards is left tall and are laid back over the hedge. This dies off and forms a temporary way of holding the hedge in place for a year or two until it becomes re-established. The Netherlands is the only country outside the UK and Ireland to have competitive hedgelaying.

Germany

In the exposed uplands of the Eifel mountains, a particular type of hedgelaying has been employed since the 17th century that makes use of the characteristics of red beech to shield domestic housing and also to protect fields from damage by cattle and wind erosion and drying. This area around the town of Monschau is known as the Monschau Hedge Land and has become a recognised cultural landscape.

North America

Andrew Jackson Downing's wrote in his 1941 classic, The Theory of Practice of Landscape Gardening, that living fences were not used as often as wooden or stone fences in the United States. However, he was experimenting with native hedge plants, including arbor vitae and American corollaries to species that are commonly lain in Britain, such as Newcastle thorn and Washington thorn; he found the buckthorn (unclear which species) to be preferred in New England and the Osage Orange to be popular in the southern states. While he makes no mention of a hedgelaying tradition, he refers to what was then known as "rustic work," where "stout rods of native forest trees are chosen, with the bark on, six to ten feet in length; these are sharpened and driven into the ground in the form of a lattice.... When covered with luxuriant vines and climbing plants, such a barrier is often admirable for its richness and variety."

Australia

The skill is re-emerging in Australia, particularly in Tasmania. In more temperate parts of Australia the British settlers in the nineteenth century planted hedges of hawthorn. They also took with them the skill of hedgelaying. Although hedgelaying then died out, many hedges survived, and there is now new interest in their conservation.

British emigrants

Since the influx of the British settling on mainland Europe, the occasional hedgelayer has taken the skill of hedge-laying with them. Although mostly similar to the practical and swiftly worked Isle of Wight style, occasional examples of a laid hedge can be seen on the continent. However regular management is rare, and very few hedgerows are managed in a way sympathetic to the hedgelayer.

References

External links

National Hedgelaying Society
South of England Hedge Laying Society
Hedge Laying Association of Ireland website
Hedgelink
Hedging, a practical handbook | TCV's Conservation Handbooks website
Hedging (1942), educational video by the Ministry of Agriculture about a traditional hedger