Making something out of very little!

Last Saturday I was out with SHG working on a hedge in a private garden near Lingfield. I say hedge but it was a very disjointed affair with many large gaps. Needless to say it rained on and off all day as seems to be the norm for most hedgelaying sessions this season. It looks thicker than it actually was because of the scrub Holly and Blackthorn that was out of the hedge-line and was later removed.

The shot below shows the cant that Fred and I worked on; part Hazel, part Blackthorn with some Hawthorn and a previously coppiced Holly in the center.

Looking the other way you get a view of the ditch and the bank riddled with rabbit holes. The hedge thinning to nothing beyond the culvert.

We removed all of the Holly except the main stem, where we raised the crown and left it as a standard. We laid back some of the Hazel and later double pleached a couple of stems to cover the gaps. Some of the Blackthorn was difficult as it had been debarked in the past by rabbits and had dead wood where you would like the pleach - that's the challenge of hedge laying for you.

At the end of the cant, and just before it made a right-angle turn, the old hedge petered out under a large Oak, however some replanting had been done recently, which with a bit of luck will thicken up despite the deep shade.

In the end we managed to make something presentable out of very little, and once it has a bit regrowth it should make a decent hedge.

This shot does not fully show, or do justice to, the nice smooth curve Fred got to the binders round the 90 degree turn in the hedge-line nearest the camera.

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.

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

Cherkley Court - Second Session

On a somewhat surprisingly - in this rather mild early winter - frosty morning SHG were back at Cherkley Court. This time we had two hedges to lay within the complex. One was in the 'car park' and the other at, what will become in due course, the main entrance. I was assigned to the latter, which was a maiden double row hedge of some ten or so years; mostly Hawthorne but with a few Field Maple and Spindle mixed in. There was no field layer to speak of and, other than some Clematis vitalba tangling the tops, there was no impediment to laying the mostly 2 to 4 inch stems.

This piece of work was difficult to photograph due to the proximity of a rather busy road and the fact that we were working on the north side on what was a very bright sunny day.

It would appear that the hedge had been cut at about four foot at some time in the last few years but was otherwise unmolested. So it was easy enough work and handled in the main with hand tools.

Although this hedge was planted as a double row, many of the whips had not taken and there were many sections of single row stems and some sizeable gaps. In the photo below Con is healing-in some whips in one such gap. Note the heavy frost on the grass in the background. Even a short lived frost such as this has a surprising effect on the interaction of metal cutting tools and living wood. There is a distinct sound and brittleness to the cut, and 'Yorkshires' have a pronounced ring to them when cutting the pleach. I'm told that after prolonged periods of hard frost - not something we get to often nowadays - even young stems become so brittle that they are impossible to cut and lay without them breaking off.

As I said, not great photos due to the bright sun coming from the 'wrong' direction, but this shot shows the finished section from the East. This will be mirrored on the West side of the entrance when we lay that side in January.

 

Another shot looking East, with the strong sunlight makeing the hedge look rather thinner than it actually is, but with a nice stake line - and the frost still on the grass at 1300hrs.

 

Looking from inside the entrance you get a different perspective and I wish I had taken more shots from this side, although the brash rather obscures the view.

Scotney Castle - second visit

Back at Scotney Castle on Saturday, for the second visit with SEHLS. After the rain we have experienced over the last couple of weeks the ground is saturated and all vehicles had to be left in the car parks. The field next to the hedge was very wet and swishy underfoot but fortunately did not turn completely to mud around the hedge itself. We were working on the second section of the hedge that we started on our last visit in October but this section had a different structure and content, being a mix of Hawthorn and Hazel with one or two other species occurring randomly throughout. There was some self seeded rose and oddly one or two spindly Beech saplings.

I took the first cant which meant no laying off - don't know why this was left by those who arrived before me, as it was no better or worse than the other cants. I just had to undo some of the binding from the end of the previously laid section and start laying straight into the existing stakes - bonus! 

As it rained on and off for most of the day I didn't take as many photos as I had intended.

You can see from the photo below that the hedge had been allowed to grow up uncut but had recently - possibly last year - been flailed at about eight feet. This combined with the grazing of the sides of the hedge by the Sussex cattle meant that there were a lot of sturdy stems but not much side or top growth...

...and you can see it was much the same all down the hedge, although it was rather thin under the conifer (Scots Pine?) at the far end.

Looking down the hedge you get an impression of the species mix and density of the stems. On the right is a large Hawthorn with a 5-6 inch base and a lot of side stems, and on the left a Hazel stool with half a dozen straight poles and no side growth. What I did was to remove most of the large Hawthorn and lay the smaller stems in front and behind this, then lay most of the Hazel - but I did take out a couple of the straight poles for use as stakes.

In this shot you can see that one of the earlier large Hawthorns (right of centre) has been much reduced and laid. The sides look and bit bare for South of England style at this point but there was just sufficient material coming up to cover most of the pleachers.

A bit later...

 

By the time we got to the staking and binding stage the rain had cleared and the sun was out. Quite pleased with my finished cant and with the fact that, although hedges like this can be a struggle, you get the satisfaction that the hedge is rejuvenated and remodelled, which has has many benefits for wildlife, as well as improving the appearance and making the hedge easier to manage in future; and on this note I found, in my cant, what one of the NT wardens identified as a disused Dormouse nest just off the ground in a Hazel stool.

This last shot is looking up the two sections of hedge with binding in progress.

The 2014 Nationals

The Nationals were held near Grantham in Lincolnshire on a dry sunny Saturday. Having driven through very heavy rain on the way up on Friday I was expecting the site to be waterlogged but in fact the 'going was soft' rather than muddy.

The SoE section was alongside a farm track and opposite the Midland section, just a stones throw from the main event site. We were able to park in the field next to our cants, which is always a great help.

In the photo below, those cutting in the Open class were nearest the camera, with the Intermediate class starting in the distance. We veterans were lumped in with the Intermediates and in fact there was only one non-veteran in the class.

The cants were ten meters (eleven yards) for both classes, which was a bit of a surprise and the stakes and binders left something to be desired. However, we were all in the same boat and the hedge was even throughout with a few large stems in each cant, no difficult under-storey but very tangled at the top where it had been flailed repeatedly.

As usual the five hours flew by and it was a rush to get my bit finished, so no time for photos during laying. I could have done with another half hour to put some finishing touches but did get the basics finished. The build was OK but the stake line was rushed and could have been a lot better as it wandered out of the hedge-centre towards one end. 

My cant is below with the Midland cutters across the track and the event marquees behind them.

I managed a third place in the Intermediates behind Dave and Lex and all in all I was happy with that as a fair result. Below is a shot of Dave's winning hedge.

The SoE Open class was won by Paul with this...

 

 ...and his very nice stake line.

 

This is a shot down the SoE section from Intermediates towards the Open class in the distance.

And for something different, this is Gary's cant in the Derby class.

Despite the length of the cants it was another great event as the Nationals always are. A nice meal at the hotel and a few drinks in the bar afterwards completed the day.

Oh, and Ian won the SoE regrowth prize - hurrah.