A hedge or hedgerow is a line of closely spaced shrubs and tree species, planted and trained in such a way as to form a barrier or to mark the boundary of an area. Hedges which are used to separate a road from adjoining fields or one field from another, and of sufficient age to incorporate larger trees, are known as hedgerows.
| Intro Outside the UK Afterthoughts | Traditional styles |
Special thanks to Brian Kaller, Energy Bulletin 05Apr2011 for these 6 paragraphs.
Photo: Low hedge in Cwm Llinau, Wales.
It seems as though British hedges are often lower and tightly-knit, like a wall of basketry, while Irish hedges are more strips of dense forest.
Hedgerows in Ireland are lines of densely-planted trees, with fast-growing breeds like willow, elder, hazel, birch, chestnut, pine, hawthorn, blackthorn and rowan. Their branches intertwine so thickly that they weave like threads in rope. Blackberry brambles and ivy help fill the spaces above, and useful weeds below.
Photo: Gorse hedges, County Clare, near Bealkelly.
Hedgerows supplement crops by producing a reservoir of food and fuel for lean times, including herbs for balanced nutrition and medicine. Unlike field crops, the hedgerow provides for much of the year; in spring they have hawthorn shoots and dandelions for salads, and nettle and bramble shoots for tea. Next month there will be linden leaves and daisies; with rose hips and elderflowers later still; and in autumn, sloes and blackberries.
Before you plant, know the habits of what you are planting. Ivy sinks its roots into bark or masonry, and should never be allowed to grow up the side of any building. Roses and other scramblers, which have hooks or thorns that latch onto other plants and allow them to pull themselves upwards, would require support. Twiners like wisterias twist their tendrils around trees and other structures, while beans whip their shoots around looking for something to latch onto.
Wonderful privacy, wonderful atmosphere.
Photo: Secret path, Donadea.
Keep in mind how much sun or shade the plants need, and how much they are likely to get where you’re planting them. Finally, make sure they have enough water - the ground along a wall often stays dry in the rain - and that toxic paint is not flaking off if you’ll be eating it.
If you have an apartment, you could use a balcony or install a window box, and train plants to grow out around your window or grow downwards using hanging plants like nasturtiums.
Everyone lives in a different situation - a farm, a flat in town, a suburban house - but most of us have some opportunity to experiment with three-dimensional farming. Look around your neighbourhood, and try to imagine what it could be.
Hedges arose as barriers against stock and raiders. A well-maintained hedge provides shelter against sun and wind for livestock; herbs which stock will seek out when their health needs them; and a protective home for up to 600 plant species, 1,500 insects, 65 birds and 20 smaller mammals (including half of Britain's rarest). And it looks nicer than barbed wire.
To do all this, however, a hedge needs to be well managed; thick, bushy, vigorous. Left untended, it will thin out, grow tall and gappy, and eventually turn into a line of trees.
Properly laid a good hedge will, with regularly winter trimming to maintain its strength and structure, be good for 50 years. With regular laying, a hedge should last for thousands of years.
Hedges were common by the Bronze Age (1,000BCE). In 55BC Julius Caesar marvelled that tribes of Flanders "cut into slender trees and bent them over so that many branches came out along the length. They finished this off by inserting brambles and briars, so that these hedges formed a defence-like wall which could not only not be penetrated, but not even seen through."
To start:
Photo: Cutting.
Photo: Elm hedge.
Photo: Perfect hedge-laying.
Different styles evolved according to climate, farming practices and the type of trees and shrubs found to each region. More than 30 different styles prevail in Britain alone. Prime beef-rearing areas such as Oxfordshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire developed a dense, tough, bullock-proof hedge using multiple binders; mainly mixed and sheep-rearing areas such as Derbyshire needed no binders at all.
The Midland style is particularly strong and at 4ft 6ins tall it is suited to large animals. On the roadside the finish is clean and neat, a living fence of intertwined branches between stakes placed an old cubit (the length of a man's forearm or roughly 18 inches) apart. Meanwhile the bushy tips have been fed through to the field side forming a natural barrier to stop animals nibbling the soft tender shoots that will soon sprout from the base. Binds help it withstand the weight of leaning cattle.
Photo: Up close.
The Welsh Border style evolved on hill farms and is good for sheep country. Laid between stakes, spaced two feet apart, it takes the rough brush on both sides.
Photo: Trees laid.
As new growth takes hold the old gradually dies back. Regular trimming will maintain a hedge for decades. Re-laying is ideally carried out every 25 to 30 years. Left unmanaged a hedge will simply grow upwards, leaving gaps at the base that allow livestock through, and will eventually become a line of trees.
Hawthorn and blackthorn make the best hedges, their branches forming a dense barrier. Hazel and beech are also good.
If you want to work out the age of a hedge count the number of woody shrub species found within a 30 metre stretch. Each one denotes a century of growth.
If an expert charges up to £220 a day (in 2011) and it takes 3 men 10 days to lay 275m, hedge laying is best left to the farmhand who does it in winter when farmwork slackens off.
[Wikipedia, Sept2011]
Over the centuries, different parts of the UK developed their own distinctive styles of hedge laying, all based on the same basic theory. There are articles on the internet which provide photos of each regional style, helpful for anyone intending to become a professional hedgelayer.
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:
As the name suggests this style is from the county of Derbyshire which is a mixed farming and sheep area.
Typical features:
Used in Somerset and Lancashire. Both of the following two styles are good sheep hedges; they use stakes, but as a rule neither uses any type of bindings:
A double brush style; this means that the twiggy ends of the pleachers are kept both sides of the hedge. Brecon style is practised in Breconshire, Radnorshire, Herefordshire & Monmouthshire.
Typical features:
Typical features:
The Stake & Pleach style is used in Monmouthshire, Brecknockshire, Radnorshire, Carmarthenshire and Montgomeryshire. The Flying Hedge style (a low hedge on a bank) is used in Pembrokeshire, the Gower, Glamorganshire, Monmouthshire and Carmarthenshire.
Also known as the Sussex Bullock Fence and has a double brush style, but the cut base of the pleachers can be seen. Sometimes a pleacher is laid almost flat at the base before the next few are laid at a normal angle, this is presumably to help keep the sheep at bay.
Typical features:
Now almost extinct, the Isle of Wight style looks untidy but is an effective stockproof barrier and is extremely quick and easy to lay successfully. Pleachers are simply laid one on top of the other, usually in alternating directions, with little of the brash removed, and then pegged down with crooked hazel stakes (similar to thatching spars). It is not suitable for domestic use or competitions, which has contributed to its decline, but is principally now used for restoring overgrown hedges.
Typical features:
The Yorkshire style is a sheep hedge as used on mixed arable & livestock farms. It is laid between two arable fields – and is so designed that by the time grass has replaced plough land in the rotation system, the hedge will have grown to a normal height. The base is too dense for sheep to push under it.
Typical features:
In Devon hedge laying is usually referred to as steeping. The pleachers are known as steepers. They are held in place by crooks (forked sticks driven into the centre of the hedgebank). The two sides of the hedge are steeped separately (as long as the hedge is big enough) leaving a gap through the centre of the hedge. When steeping is finished any eroded soil is cast up on top of the hedge to retain a good height of bank.
Typical features:
The shrubs are laid along the top of an earth bank faced with stones. Frequently the stones are set in herringbone style. Not all Cornish hedges have shrubs on top of the bank.
The style of hedge used in Devon, Cornwall and parts of Wales gives us the familiar deep Devon lanes. However in reality they are seldom particularly deep – but rather what they do have are high banks, which give the impression of depth.
The field is often on the same level as the road. The banks are sometimes faced with stone rather than turf. However these hedges are not walls which have stone all the way through, but are rather an earth bank faced with stone. These are known as Cornish hedges.
In this context, the word hedge derives from an earlier one meaning bank, that is, the division between strips in the medieval farming system. The association comes from the time when after the 18th century enclosures each man had to dig a ditch as his boundary and pile the soil spoil on his side of the ditch. He then had to plant bushes in order to keep his animals on his own land. This 'digging down and stocking up' was very hard work and as a result when creating internal boundaries, the ditch was often left out but the result was still called a hedge.
In parts of Holland hedgelaying is practised, with styles distinct to that country. With all Dutch styles no stakes or bindings are used. One of every 3 or 4 standards are 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.
Since the influx of the British settling on mainland Europe, the occasional hedgelayer has taken the skill of hedge-laying with him. 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.
These next paragraphs comment on various hedge shrubs, but you should research deeply before committing to propagating or planting.
Look for similar types of hedge in the neighbourhood to see what plants grow well in your locality. This may be limited by soil type, rainfall, drainage or lack thereof, altitude, latitude and exposure to the elements such as wind, frost, salt air. If it is a native species and not growing in your locality then there is probably a good reason.
This pretty much restricts you to beech, hornbeam, yew, holly or privet. Although the leaves of beech and hornbeam hedges die in the autumn, they remain attached until pushed off by the new buds in the spring so remain an effective screen through the winter months. Yew is slow growing and highly poisonous and should not be used where there are stock. Yew, beech and hornbeam all have the advantage that they can grow tall whilst being kept dense and relatively narrow. In a garden setting a mixture of green and copper beech can look very spectacular. Holly is very slow growing and tends to suppress other plants once it finally does become established.
The size and nature of the plants required will depend on both your budget, your patience and whether your require a formal or informal hedge (see below). Remember that the larger the plant, the larger the roots, and even with some trimming of the roots, more effort is going to be required to plant them. This is especially true with transplants which will already have a dense and well developed root system.
You should also consider whether any hedgerow trees are required. Twenty metres is the minimum distance that should be left between hedgerow trees so that they remain sufficiently spaced at maturity and do not completely dominate the hedge. One option is to plant them slightly inside the line of the hedge though this may require additional stock protection.