Back at Cherkley Court

On Saturday SHG were back at Cherkley to lay 80 meters along the road by the main entrance. The road was conned off and lights controlled the traffic flow. A bright sunny morning with higher than normal temperature for the end of October.

The hedge had an odd mix of species, with very little Hawthorn and a lot of Spindle and Field Maple. Most of the stems were two to three inches in diameter with the few of four or more. There were some large multi-stemmed plants, and some that had been damaged by road-salt and pollution that presented a challenge, and some large gaps that will need planting up.

This is one of the better sections, mostly Spindle with some reasonably sized Field Maple., but note the variation is stem size.

Rather a poor shot of the finished hedge but with nice autumn colours.

There are several ways to approach the laying by hand of a stem of a reasonable size and yesterday presented an opportunity to photograph one of them.

This is a Field Maple of some 4 inches in diameter at the base. I have just removed the remains of the spiral guard, hence the markings on the trunk.

What I have done here is to make a straight saw cut about two thirds into the stem a few inches above where the final heal cut will be made. I have then used my axe - in this case a 4lb Elwell topping axe - to make the pleaching cut. The saw cut I made allows the chips to fall away easily, allowing a clean line of sight when using the axe and reducing splitting of the heel.

Having cut in to the required depth for the pleach, I then used the axe to cut downwards and lever over the stem, leaving a nice hinge. The heel was then cut off at an angle to allow water run-off - this may look a bit high from this angle but the bank is very steep and there is only an inch or so of the heal above the soil on the other side.

This technique is often referred to as 'using a safety cut' and can be very helpful when working in confined spaces, especially on 'South of England' style hedges. In circumstances where you can swing a felling axe, experienced hedgers will cut the pleach and the angled heel at the same time using downward and upward cuts. A good example of this can be seen in this YouTube video of Peter cutting a Midland style exhibition hedge in The Netherlands - he only had a 2.5lb axe with him so it was no easy task, and you can appreciate why we now use chainsaws.

The Nationals 2015

This year's Nationals were held at Chew Valley Lakes, Stoke Hill, Bristol. 

In complete contrast to the recent weather it rained all day, or at least for the whole time we were cutting, and as a result I took very few photos. However, here are a few shots of the day.

This is a shot up the hedge line before the off. unusually the cants were pre-drawn with the SoE Vets nearest the camera, then the SoE Open extending almost to the corner at the far end of the field. Along the far side were the various Midland classes.

This is my cant, second from the end, well third really as we had a 'no-show'. Almost entirely Hawthorn with a couple of self seeded rose and some bramble. The front and back had been mown off, and presumably the stock fence removed, so there was little clearing out to do. There was little of any size in our section, with only a few stems over three inches but much of it was multi-stemmed from ground level and being under the pines it had grown very much to one side.

It started to drizzle before the off and heavy showers passed through on a regular basis making for a very wet session. Being rather warm it was impossible to work in a coat so most cutters just got wet. I find the worst thing is wet gloves, and so I wore a gripper glove on my right hand, which gave a good purchase on the hand tools but was in no way thorn proof - my hand still bears the evidence of this.

This is my finished cant. Not too bad but notice my silly mistake - last week at the Hampshire competition we had laid to three and a half feet and I did the same here. I realised my error before banging in the stakes and lifted the binders but you can see that  the top of the hedge is rather low, leaving a bit of a gap under the binders - did the judges notice?

Looking back up the finished cants we have Clive nearest the camera, then mine and then Dave and Frank, there being only four of us (plus the one no-show).

I manged second slot behind Dave's winning hedge seen below. Nicely done with a thick even build.

And here is a picture (by Jackie Gilligan) of a very happy Paul having won the SoE Open AND Supreme Champion. I think this is only the second time a SoE cutter has won Supreme and it has been many years since the first. Well done Paul.

Belmont Wood Fest

A quick shot of the dummy hedge created at today's Belmont Wood Fest looking away from the event towards the wood.

I was in a bit of a corner but not cut off from the main event being between some stick makers and Kent Woodland Employment, some of whose machinery can be seen on the right. I did get a good number of interested visitors and some possible leads for work, although some people did want me to build one of these in their garden!

SEHLS on tour 2015

I was fortunate to be able to join a small group of SEHLS hedge layers on a visit to The Netherlands. The purpose of the visit was to help with a training day and to take part in the annual Maasheggenvlechten festival of hedges and hedge laying.

The training hedge was a continuation of the one we worked on last year (link), about twelve years old and easily manageable with hand tools.

 

 Some sections contained nice stems of Beech, Hawthorne and Field Maple but others had block-planted Dog Rose and Guelder Rose.

After the lunch break Phil gave a short talk on tool care and sharpening.

 I was working with Sjoerd, who has some experience of hedge laying but wanted to brush up on cutting techniques and building the hedge. We drew the end cant that had a great deal of Guelder Rose in it and ended with a large section of tangled Dog Rose. It wasn't ideal but we worked through pleaching small and large stems, back laying and double pleaching.

 We were both pleased with the end result...

 ...and the stake line was nice and straight.

On Sunday we moved to Oeffelt for the Maasheggen festival. This is an area of land on the flood plain of the Maas River. It has been managed in a manner that recreates the field systems that existed before the last war and several kilometres of hedges have been planted over the last twenty years. This year is the tenth anniversary of the festival and its popularity continues to grow. The photo below shows the competitors getting their pre-session greeting and photo-shoot. I believe that thirty four teams, of between two and five competitors, took part laying the local style.

Gary and Phil entered the competition and Peter and myself laid Midland and SoE respectively as demonstration cants in an area set aside for international styles.

We got about ten metres each of rather heavy hedge (for hand tools that is) which had no field layer and good top growth. There was some rabbit - or more likely hare - damage and some rot caused by the use of the flail cutter.

 

The axe work was enjoyable although some of the stems had rot but were not particularly brittle.

As was the case last year, the weather was dry and very warm - so warm in fact that Peter was forced to remove his trade mark blue overalls!

The photo below is a close up of the cant laid by a couple from France who were laying their local style. The large stem has been sawn through to the extent that one would when cutting a pleacher and then laid over. I have seen this method before but never with this level of skill. Note there is no split-back and the hinge is of exactly the right proportions. We might say that the heal would be better cut at an angle to allow water to run off.

 

The style practised in Flanders is thin and sparse with small stems tied into the hedge with willow whips.

Although the International section was away from the main competition, good numbers of visitors came to look at our hedges. Visitor numbers were estimated by the organisers to be in the region of 10,000 - imagine that at our Nationals!

This is the local style. Rather sparse and very open at the bottom to our eyes but I am told that as this is a flood plain account is taken of debris building up against the hedge in times of flood that might sweep the hedge away. Live stakes (crops) give good stability and the tops of these are pleached along and woven into the top of the hedge.

 

This is the winning team looking very pleased with the Golden Heap.

Two of our champions discuss a great weekend. Many thanks are due to our Dutch hosts who made us most welcome and were very  generous with their hospitality.

A YouTube slide show of more photgraphs from the trip is available HERE

SEHLS Annual Competition

Sunday saw the SEHLS annual competition - yes, the day following the Patron's competition. Taking place on the Angmering Estate, West Sussex within the South Downs National Park there could not have been a more beautiful setting for a hedge laying competition. The weather behaved itself, with a bright frosty start and, although it clouded over later, it stayed dry until we reached the pub for lunch and prizes. The Skylarks sang, Buzzards soared over the woods and without the background roar of chainsaws (a hand tools only competition) it was a very peaceful and enjoyable day.

The hedge itself was some twelve or so years old, double planted and consisting -in the veteran section - of Hawthorn with some Hazel. Some cants at the top of the hill had more Hazel and consequently more stems to the yard. The hedge had been fenced against rabbits and whilst this had in the main been removed, some of the wire remained in the ground. There was little field layer, except ivy in some cants and no bramble or rose. Unfortunately the hedge had been flailed more than once at about eight feet producing some nasty stag-horns but then left to grow on about another three feet.

I didn't take any photos for a while as I was concerned about time but in fact there was plenty thanks to the lightness of the hedge and the lack of clearing out to be done before laying.

Everyone finished in good time and the standard was very high. The novice class in particular must have been difficult to judge as they had all done an exceptional job - pity I didn't think to take some photos of their cants; this however is a shot up the hedge from the champions and senior sections, with the veterans and novices at the top.

 

Root and Back Laying

Out with SEHLS on Saturday at Rotherfield. For a change the weather was cold, dry and sunny although the recent rain had left the fields and tracks waterlogged and very soon the area around the hedge turned to mud.

There were two sections of hedge being tackled and I was with a small group of six working on an old and much bashed-about hedge that needed rejuvenating. As you can see from the photo below the hedge was a continuation of a trimmed section, about twelve feet high and next to a redundant farm building.

It had been cut at various heights in the past resulting in multiple stems and a very tangled upper section.

One of the first plants I had to lay in my cant was a Hawthorn where the stem had two sizeable roots either side of where the hinge would normally be but had rotted away underneath. This could not be laid in the normal way so I severed the root on the far side and then cut down the stem so that it was held by just the root on this side.

This allowed the stem to be laid over, retaining the root to keep the plant alive and leaving the now separated heal to the right to form a new plant. It's not laid right down yet as it is being held up by the laid-off stems out of shot to the left.

The next problem was a large five stemmed stool of what I think is red-stemmed willow - not easy to see from the photo but this years growth was a deep red colour. This stool had been much hacked about in the past and if there had been more material around it I might have just laid the stem on the front left and then trimmed the stool down nearer ground level. However, I needed to fill in the gaps so I laid all the stems bar one and back-laid the one on the right. This can be difficult if the stem is in any way brittle as it has to be bent back at an acute angle, but luckily this one behaved itself. A few contorted stems of Blackthorn can be seen on the right of the photo and with multiple pleaches these were brought in to fill the gaps.

A bit further down the cant was a large old Hawthorn, which again can prove challenging but this one was sound and not too brittle and went down well.

The hedge was so tangled in places a bit of climbing was required to free it up.

By the time we got round to the final clear up the light was fading and it was getting cold. This hedge had presented us with a number of challenges and at times it seemed an impossible task but in the end we made a great job of it and breathed new life into an old neglected hedge.