The art of hedge laying - the interwoven cycle of life

It’s the end of January and the crisp cool air is interspersed with the tap tap tap sound of billhooks and axes on wood, gentle sawing, the intermittent chatter of men and women, and occasional birdsong.

We’re in a field in the south of Dartmoor National Park, high above the valley, to join a group of people on a two-day training course in hedgelaying.

The course is being run by Jeremy Weiss as part of the Our Upland Commons programme, and has attracted a group of people who fancy learning the skill. Some people do it just for the pleasure of it, some may have their own hedges to tend, others might want to use the skill in volunteering. But the day isn’t only about hedging - while being here, they’re picking up knowledge about farming and countryside heritage in the local area and about the ecology and wildlife of Dartmoor.

Looking across the brash to the section of hedge being worked on

The field runs long and thin, with one curved side marked by a hedge. This hedge has been growing freely for around ten years. Looking across to the hills or ‘hams’ around us, I can see many more fields hemmed by hedges. There’s a staggering 33,000 miles of hedges in Devon. No one knows quite how old they are, but, Jeremy tells us, many date back long before the enclosure acts. Some could have been growing since the the Bronze Age.

There’s more than one way to lay a hedge (Devon alone has seven different recognised hedgelaying styles). Here, the hedges are laid in the Devon Double Comb style: trees growing in two lines, either side of a raised bank. Between the lines, earth is cast up to maintain the bank. Among the trees are willow, rowan, oak, blackthorn, hazel, ash and holly, and in just a couple of months with the coming of spring, the plants that live on the banks will show themselves: bluebells, ferns, anemones, wild garlic and many others.

Gloves are an essential part of the task

People are working in pairs, each faced with a section of hedge. The first thing to do is to select which upright stems to cut down low, and which to slice into, and gently bend. The long bent pieces are laid down - as ‘steepers’ - and pinned down using ‘crooks’ (taken from cut hazel) to form a woody woven way. The cut trees will not die, but will send up new shoots, and the hedge will gain height. You can leave the hedge then, or, ideally, the first trim can come in June. Each fresh shoot, when cut, will produce 2-3 new shoots. There can be another trim in September to encourage the hedge to bush out again. After that, a hedge need not be cut for another ten years, although trimming for the first few years will help to keep it thick and busy.

The hedge then becomes a haven for wildlife - something that flowers and fruits, and offers a home. ‘People tend to forget that pretty much all trees have flowers,’ Jeremy says. ‘For example, willow flowers in spring - and the bees absolutely love it. Hedges are like three dimensional meadows - they’re full of flowers! And all of those flowers will later become fruit or nuts, which will then feed wildlife. So for pollinators, and for birds, just letting hedges grow is really, really valuable.’

Slowing down, and marvelling at the small things

There’s a gentleness about the day, and about the people who are here. There’s an atmosphere of calmness, with careful work, soft conversation and plenty of laughter. We’re among people who have clearly benefitted from being outside, with their hands on tools, trees, and earth, and who have shifted their rhythm as they’ve worked to the sounds of birdsong, breeze and billhooks.

I chat with the participants and find that they’ve picked up sufficient skills to help to lay a good hedge remarkably quickly: and mostly, it’s about looking and feeling, and allowing the thin trees of the hedge to guide them. But there have been surprises along the way. After telling me about how she weighs up the difference in trunks, avoids thorns, and loves the suppleness of hazel, Marije beams as she shares a special moment. ‘It was a real surprise to find what looks to me like a dormouse nest - a little ball of moss, the size of a tennis ball. And then I found a small hazelnut next to it with a little round hole. Looking on the internet, I think this may well be the work of a dormouse. So who knows, this might be actually a dormouse habitat. Wonderful! And we're just hopefully adding to this for years to come.’

Seeing connections in the natural environment

This work is panacea for the soul - and it’s great for the hedge and the wider landscape. Hedges are part of an ecological web, with a kind of gradient that flows from valley bottom to higher fields, from hedges to woodlands, and to the open moorlands of the upland commons. Different plants and animals need different things, and tending to a blend of habitats is at the heart of good countryside management. ‘I try not really to think so much about individual species, but more about the environment that you're creating as a whole,’ says Jeremy. ‘So rather than saying, I want to lay this hedge in a particular way for doormice or for a certain butterfly, for me it is about creating a habitat that lots of things can benefit from.

‘When it comes to hedges, we tend to think in terms of what grows on top of the hedge, but in Devon, the word hedge refers mostly to the bank. And actually the banks of Devon hedges contain an enormous variety of species of plants, and as a consequence, they support a very large variety of different creatures. The process of hedgelaying is so valuable, because you're allowing a cycle to develop over time.’

Good hedges, and not-so-good hedges

Listening to Jeremy, it’s clear to see that a well-kept hedge is an example of farming and conservation being inseparable, and a legacy of practices that have brought benefits for many generations: a hedge is only there because people have created it to provide a boundary around fields, and in the process have created habitats and wildlife corridors.

But not all hedges are cared for in a way that prolongs their life or adds to the network of wildlife. ‘If you're flailing a hedge every single year, you're cutting off all of the flowering wood. And as a consequence, you're cutting off all the fruiting wood as well. Some people choose instead to coppice hedges - to cut them down to the ground and then let them regrow. This is better than flailing every year because they can grow, but the problem is, that doesn't do anything about the gaps. Far better, through the process of laying the hedge, to make a thick boundary that fills up all the gaps between the stools. What you're left with is not just a hedge with flowers and nuts, but also a wildlife corridor.’

No such thing as waste

When all the hedging is finished, the piles of discarded branches, sticks and twigs are huge. But nothing need go to waste. As Jeremy lists some of the things that a cut hedge provides, I find myself grinning at the richness of the dialect of Devon hedges. Cut pieces of hazel, ash and other trees provide, among other things: gads (to make spars for thatching); peasticks (for the garden); cleaves (pieces for wattle hurdles); zales (end posts of hurdles and hedges); and faggots (bundles of brash, for fire lighting, or brooms). Wood can also be used for tool handles, and these tools may be used one day to tend the very hedge they grew from.

All the pieces removed from the hedge are broken up into sizes for future use

The brash is useful too. This is collected together and burnt on site - and ideally this is another opportunity for people to sit and enjoy themselves, while the daylight fades and the air is scented with woodsmoke. When the fire dies down, it is put out with water, and the resulting charcoal and ash are blended with liquid manure to produce biochar, which is a fabulous fertiliser that can bring benefit to the soil it’s mixed with for years. You’re left with a neat hedge that has a decade of growth ahead of it, a clear field, and a group of very contented people. What’s not to like?

The group that took part in the two-day hedge laying course with Jeremey Weiss

Let’s talk about money

It’s easy to talk about hedging in terms of biodiversity benefits, but does it stack up, financially? Jeremy questions the common perception that hedgelaying is labour intensive, and very expensive. ‘It's interesting to compare the costs with alternative methods,’ he says. ‘For example, the cost of flailing a hedge works out at about 70p per metre per year, which sounds cheap, when you think that hedgelaying is maybe £10 per metre. But if the hedge is laid every 10 years, that works out as £1 per metre per year. That doesn't compare too badly to the 70p for the flailing, especially if you take into account that farmers can apply for £9 a metre for hedgelaying works.’ The mathematics goes beyond the costs to an individual farmer. ‘If you're paying a contractor £35 pounds an hour to flail your hedge, some money will go to the contractor, but a lot will go to a diesel company, to insurance, and costs of machinery. Whereas if you are paying one or two people for hedgelaying, pretty much all that money is going straight into their pocket, and into the local economy.’

Spelling out the financial side of things is an important point, and helps to dispel myths that big machines and quick jobs are of long-term benefit. And it’s a strong case for training up many more people to lay hedges, and to get involved in a fun and very beneficial circular economy, where the economy includes much more than money. Next year, when the hedgelaying season begins again, we’ll be booking on a course!

Words: Harriet Fraser

Images: Rob Fraser

Thanks to: Jeremy Weiss of Proper Edges