Hedge Laying: South of England Style

Here at Bentley Woodfair we see members of the South of England Hedge Laying Society (Chris Burchell Collins, Gary Moore and Frank Wright) demonstrate their skill using hazel to lay a hedge in the particular `South of England` style - with its specific use of `binders` to lock the hedge down tightly. They talk us through the traditional tools and techniques they adopt to ensure a permanent, solid, stock-proof, living hedge that will last for hundreds of years. sehls.weebly.com/ www.bentley.org.uk/ An Adliberate film www.adliberate.co.uk for WoodlandsTV www.woodlands.co.uk/tv

[@johnhartley3596]

I am fascinated with hedge-laying.

[@shandonmeadows8620]

I wonder if I could do it with all the invasive autumn olive and honeysuckle we have on our property

[@colinmayes9446]

Real blokes doing a smashing job, what a wonderful skill to possess, and not a damned silicone chip insight.

[@melissajensen4901]

Not in _our_ site, at least!

[@MelliaBoomBot]

This is brilliant. We’ve just moved house and I regretted not planting a hedge but we could really do with something like this. It’s maintenance but encourages so much nature. And the traditional skills needed…I’m from Wales but now live in central France and I’m going to really explore and research and hopefully promote some traditional skills round here..very inspiring, thanks all. ♥️

[@contumacious5506]

Our ancestors' life skills were impressive.

[@sh-hg4eg]

Impressive and usually of better quality and benefit. Today a lot of things are purely utilitarian and I'd a shoddy quality.

[@baljeet50]

absolute gem this video is...

[@stephenrice4554]

Beautiful , clear and practical advice . Does me good to know hedge laying is still practiced .

[@PaulOutdoors]

Superb. I laid a section of hedge and undertook some coppicing during the past month using hand tools after not having done either for around 20 years and loved it. Now I have a potential coppice project planned for next autumn winter. Thank you for a great video. Paul 👍😊

[@kevindempsey5486]

I pass a beautiful hedge on the M6(S) just south of Stafford Services and it stands out a mile 😃👏🏻

[@kelvinsparks4651]

I find it interesting seeing other styles from around the country. Being a devonshire boi I've only done Devon bank.

[@jaywalker3087]

I'm about to take it up again as I've retired and my friend has a field in Cornwall that needs doing..

[@WOODLANDSTV]

Sounds like a fantastic idea! Have a look at some of the other films on the channel, including a more recent one on hedge laying. Hopefully they'll be of help to you and your friend. Let us know how you get on!

[@Littleredhen13]

Excellent craft. Earth friendly. Greetings from Arkansas.

[@WanderingNature]

Amazing I love this I made a willow pod last week in my yard to sit in for shade and privacy

[@toterola451]

Great video! I'm just getting started with my "retirement project" of planting a hedge that I will pleach and lay when it's ready.

[@mrnobody2689]

The last bastion for a lot of wildlife, let them be wider and taller with evergreen plants for year round nesting.

[@sh-hg4eg]

Unfortunately a lot of landowners are neglecting them and, of course the powers that be are happily profiting from building on our ever dwindling countryside.

[@barkershill]

Putting evergreen plants in the hedge won’t make the birds nest all year round . They are driven by instinct to lay at the time of year when food is abundant

[@futurecaredesign]

Did you notice the branch used for a billhook holder on the belt of one of the workers? Amazing use of local material :) Its visible at 3:10

[@atomicsmith]

well spotted

[@lewispiper7951]

Good video, this will help me laying a hedge to help keep wind off of a cover crop making it more suitable for game birds, liked the video keep p the good work :)

[@ralpha679]

The best style

[@obedan3990]

Awesome work👍👍👍👍

[@silva-anderida7695]

Nice one,my friends!

[@numptyjames1]

my grandfather laid hedges on his farm in Surrey 40+ the hedge is st in good condition

[@railway-share3820]

Excellent.

[@charliecroker6445]

My Gr andad was born on 1894 and a farmer who used to thatch his haystacks and hedge lay as well he died in the 1960s so his knowledge died with him , we come from the west sussex surrey border so imagine this would of been the style he used

[@Improveng1]

Nice one boys.

[@mackenziemitchell1109]

love to see this kind of conservation work. not as popular in canada sadly

[@jeremesalazar3134]

None steel wire divide the farm can be seen but only green shrubs, makes the place wonderfully beautiful.

[@tomanycooks]

so interesting

[@baker2niner]

I've heard that you can estimate the date of a hedge by the number of varieties exist in 1 meter. The maths are one variety is introduced by nature per century. A friend in Berkshire measured his hedge and found 8 varieties per meter -- so, roughly, 1200.

[@samuelmellars7855]

Wouldn't that be 800?

[@MrKarl0077]

how would Lilac bushes work for a hedge?

[@sallymoen7932]

I'm still wondering why they have a ditch in front of each side of the hedge, or is that a feature of fields in England, for irrigation purposes? Anyway, I do like the looks of a nice hedge. Besides the benefit to nature.

[@WOODLANDSTV]

Hi, thanks for your nice comment and question. There are a few parts to the answer, yes you're right, they do provide irrigation and flood management, but also to make it slightly harder for livestock to cross the hedge line. Interestingly though, the ditch also relates to the legal boundary marker between the two pieces of land, rather than the hedge itself. If there's a hedge with only one ditch then the hedge belongs to the landowner on that side of the ditch, with a ditch on either side then I guess it becomes a typically English complicated legal debate. Usually settled over cider and pork pies in the village pub!

[@williamavery9185]

Did you know Alan Ashby fron Speldhurst ?

[@cringerBB]

I always felt like I was born too late, I miss those times, when labour was real, tools were real, products were real, world today is some sad joke...

[@paulmckenzie4291]

I'm completely with you. Not only do I hanker but I will pursue the old ways. I've given the current ways a chance for more of my working life than I have left. Now I'll take my chances and try and return to the old ways. I may die in penury but at least I'd've tried. The alternative is to buy jars of homemade jam at local markets. I'd rather do both. Cheers x

[@user-et9dt7zi6u]

Какие породы деревьев лучше всего использовать для этого способа устройства изгородей?

[@TheLastLogicalOne]

Is there a name for what is described at 4:50

[@calebfuller4713]

"Binding", or more particularly if you want to search for it, "hedge binding".

[@clayz1]

Are these in any way equivalent to hedgerows in France circa 1944?

[@jeffreycrawley1216]

If you're thinking of "bocage" then no, they were hedgerows growing either side of sunken roads so you had to cut through one hedgerow, drop down onto the road and then climb up and cut through the other hedgerow - almost impossible until Sgt Curtis G. Culin invented the "Rhino" prongs fitted to the front of the Sherman tank.

[@jimc4731]

How does one place a new hedge through an area where no hedge existed before? Thanks, JIM

[@sh-hg4eg]

Your best bet is to dig a trench, fill it with bare root hedge stock and fill it in. Let it grow for 4 or so years and then lay it.

[@rickster348]

- what kind of plant's do they use?

[@mastabas]

hedges

[@PaulOutdoors]

Hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, field maple, holly and a sprinkling of others 👍😊

[@burningout.1798]

Whic woodland do you prefer deciduous or conifers

[@willhyde5026]

Depends what for

[@sh-hg4eg]

We don't have natural conifer forests in England and Yews are a rare treat. Scotland have their Scots Pine trees. Imported conifers have almost zero benefit to wildlife here and the plantations often have a negative benefit due to their dense planting shading out the floor.

[@georgebenedict1660]

Tenn. Apple tree and ashwood vine fence. Will stop rabbits wildlife and domestic animal trespass or escape. Sowing pecan trees and walnut trees every 75' apart provides food and shade for man and animals alike. A man made wind and solor powered liverunning Brook along side makes for a very cool breeze under the shade trees.

[@Deliquescentinsight]

'If there's a bustle in your hedgerow'

[@xxlegolas]

Don't be alarmed, now...

[@humphrey4976]

It’s just a spring clean for the may queen...

[@TemplarX2]

Can you make a cabin with this method then maybe add a clay and straw lining?

[@sh-hg4eg]

I doubt it.

[@twotone3070]

What they called binders I would have called heathers, I think, it was a long time ago. Obviously I wasn't taught South of England style :)

[@portcullis5622]

I have heard of then being called "ethers".

[@georgebenedict1660]

Here in America we plant apple trees and pecan trees to use as fence stabilizers. For fencing we grow ash wood saplings bowed and entertwinned longaly. Upshoots are trained according to growth. With in 7 years growth. Our fences stop rabbits and 1800 lb cattle from venturing off property. If it can't climb or leap over 7' of natural buietiful landscape barrier, it ain't getting in or out.Heck, I'd say our fences would be hog 100% proof to.

[@sh-hg4eg]

Just like ours then.

[@VanderlyndenJengold]

"Lost hundreds of miles of hedges"? Try thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe he's talking about his small patch in the South East?

[@daisuke1639]

I swear, you watch one educational video from the 40s about hedge laying (kzbin.info/www/bejne/jaDTo4mepbR-f80) and suddenly KZbin recommends all the hedge laying videos... Great video though.

[@bouffon1]

AS far as I remember, they didn't use stakes, the uprights were already growing in place!

[@bingoboyes5385]

My father was a brilliant hedge layer from Sussex, proper old school, rarely used stakes, it's more of a Midlands/northern thing. Just a bunch of middle class boys playing at it, like most of the stuff you see at "country" fairs these days.

[@sh-hg4eg]

>It's mostly Northern and Midlands >It's middle class boys playing at it Pick one.

[@InFltSvc]

A living fence!

[@martkt10]

How long do these kinds of fences last before they need to be redone

[@ALAPINO]

Ideally... never. It'll regrow to form a very thick hedge row.

[@burlatsdemontaigne6147]

Tam McDonnagh _ There are hedgerows hundreds of years old. It is a living structure. Visit Devon some time. They have miles of lanes bordered by hedgerows.

[@sh-hg4eg]

All they need is the odd repair and the odd trim. They can last more than a life time. The irony is that a lot of land owners have neglected their hedges and now put up expensive fencing and then mow the existing hedges every year or so. They end up spending more in the long term and spend more time cutting it, all because they're too lazy to repair the existing hedge.

[@davelydon1982]

I cant believe im finding this interesting 🤔

[@andrewtrip8617]

I always thought hedge laying was to keep stock off arable land rather than to keep animals in it was to keep them out .

[@patryklewandowski5377]

South of England, you mean French style? Because its all twisted? Or southern English style? Sorry my English bad

[@MUSTASCH1O]

We can never know for sure, but if the government stayed out of the way all those years ago and just left farmers to it, we might have had lost thousands of miles less hedgerow than we did.

[@andrewtrip8617]

Are you not aware that the ministry of agriculture (the govt) paid farmers to scrub out hedges and pipe ditches as part of the drive for modernisation and productivity ?

[@MUSTASCH1O]

@@andrewtrip8617 You are correct and yes that is what I was referring to :). My point was that if they hadn't paid the farmers to grub out the hedgerows we might have had more of it than we do now. Food is a private good just like clothes, petrol and dish soap. Handing farmers public money to ostensibly increase the value of their productive assets (the fields) was a borderline scam in my opinion. Public money should only be spent on public goods.

[@danielryan3061]

@@andrewtrip8617literally what he was saying, need to improve on the reading comprehension

[@basilbrush9075]

​@@MUSTASCH1Oor we could help farmers with public money whilst using the benefits of that to feed the public!

[@elladooscurodelaescaleraal5108]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/jaDTo4mepbR-f80 son gemelos!!¡

[@JerryDLTN]

I just watched a how-to video from 1942 of hedge laying but he was smoking a pipe

[@sevdinayberguler6252]

Kürdistan hewlêr

[@CurmudgeonExtraordinaire]

While driving through the UK, I noticed a lot of these hedges and stone fences. Since I was driving to see the scenery of the country and these hedges and fences came up higher than the car I was driving, thus blocking my view, I wasn't that thrilled with them. That sort of thing never was a thing in the US though. Maybe because of the size of the farms and ranches? Maybe because the areas where a lot of them were located did not have wooded lands and were more grassland or prairie? Maybe because we just wanted to be in control of our environment instead of it being in control of us?

[@Luckingsworth]

My postulation would simply be that here in the states we went on both ends of the extremes. You either had a single farmer with just his few farm animals for his own needs that sufficed with a wooden fence he could build in a week or two, or you had the mass ranchers that had herds and lands so large you could never enclose them and they let the terrain dictate borders (large rivers and mountains and canyons).

[@CurmudgeonExtraordinaire]

@@Luckingsworth -- If you are starting out with heavily wooded terrain, then in the process of clearing it for farming, it would only make sense to create wooden fences if you wanted a fence. If you are in the Great Plains, it was primarily grasslands, so there would not have been the natural resources for building a wooden fence around the entire property. The UK has been inhabited for a lot longer, so entirely possible that they did not have the resources for wooden fences like developed on some of our farms. But the stone fences are most definitely a case of them using their available resources. Many of the area have a large amount of stones that are either naturally part of the ground or were deposited during the glacier periods. When people wanted to farm this land, they needed to remove the stones as they came along them, so they probably just started stacking them to the side and that eventually became the stone fences. As such, the size of the areas enclosed by the stone fences is probably a good indication of the amount of stones that were in that area before it was cleared for farmland. Assuming that all the fences are approximately the same height, a field with a large number of stones per acre would end up being fenced into smaller sections than a field with a small number of stones per acre.

[@sh-hg4eg]

England was heavily forested long after hedges were being layed. The reason we use hedges is because they're cheap, last more than a life time with minimal care and can prevent mostly all livestock from getting out.

[@jholid6y]

Fencing company left the chat

[@xxlegolas]

If they're smart they'll just dip into this business as well. If your customer wants a fence, you build him a fence, regardless of the materials he wants you to use!

[@sh-hg4eg]

@@xxlegolas a hedge lasts a life time, fence companies would rather you keep coming back buy expensive timber and wire.

[@potlimit2002]

That would never hold my goats. They would eat their threw in a hour.

[@Blagger3000]

Curry them.

[@sh-hg4eg]

Goats aren't a traditional livestock in Britain.

[@tzermonkey]

Didn't German tanks just demolish Mike's of hedges?

[@xxlegolas]

I am not aware of any German tanks landing on the British Isles. There were hedge rows in mainland Europe, too--in a terrain type called bocage, characterized by open fields broken up by hedge rows. However, the hedge style typically used here also included an earthen berm of 1-2 meters in height, and with all the knotted roots, they could be a real obstacle for a tank. Typically they were breached using explosive charges called bangalores, it's like a long 2" diameter pipe stuffed with explosives.

[@smartcatcollarproject5699]

Most hedges were destroyed to group small plots of lands into larger parcels, when machines transformed agriculture into a more industrial activity. Although French soldiers or resistants could easily hide and attack the Germans, I don't think this is the main explanation for their removal... About earth berms, I wonder if they could have been formed by the soil thrown over the lower horizontal branches to favor regrowth. Some of these bocage areas go back to Roman times, and 10-20 cm of earth added every century or so could form these earth banks, often with a lower path or even waterway all along ?

[@xxlegolas]

@@smartcatcollarproject5699 I absolutely love them. Natural barriers that shelter wildlife, channel water, and break the wind. They're far more attractive than wire fences, too. And if you really want to make sure no one can climb your hedges, you can always infest them with bougainvillea or blackberries!

[@tzermonkey]

@@smartcatcollarproject5699 I'm in the States and we'd had a documentary air on or "Discovery Channel," in regards to these hedge rows. The antiquity was acknowledged. I just wish I could remember the name of the doc.

[@sh-hg4eg]

@@tzermonkey a lot of these docs are just nonsense. I'm fairly sure the Allies probably blew up and ran over plenty enough too, after declaring war on Germany in the first place. They for certain blew up enough old architecture in air raids before the Germans started doing the same (Dresden was indiscriminately firebombed which started the blitz in retaliation).