March 2007

Wingrave - 15 yards hawthorn and ash, Midland Style. This is the roadside hedge bordering my garden. It's owned by the neighbouring farmer, whose house I bought and he was more than happy for me to lay and take on the subsequent management of the hedge. I laid it a month after moving in.
  

View from start of hedge, 9th March 2007. Vehicles parking tight into the hedge are compacting the ground to the detriment of the hedge and it's unsightly. The hedge, tall and gappy is no longer an effective barrier, with all growth now at the top...
 

...same view, looking the other way
 

View from start of hedge 10th March 2007. An ash stem has been laid the other way to make the best use of the material.
 

...same view, looking the other way
 

This was the view from over the road. As it happens, the house opposite was up for sale and the estate agent, appreciating what a difference it made to their outlook, added an extra image showing the newly laid hedge to their details for the house!
 

...same view August 2015. Hedge has been managed to keep it thick and fairly low
 

January 2009. Snow always sets a hedge off nicely, highlighting the binding and the lie of the pleachers
 

6th April 2015. The hedge has just had a makeover, with tall material laid back into the hedge and restaked and bound. This detail shows how dense the hedge is now.
 

9th May 2015. Facelifted and denser, the hedge is shooting out again...
 

...view looking the other way
 

5th May 2019 - spot the hedgelayer's garden! As well as the farmer's hedge at the front. I've just laid mixed hedges I planted in 2009 across the end and far side of the garden.
 

Aylesbury - 10 yards hawthorn, Midland Style. A fragment of an old field hedge that made a super laid hedge
 

View from right of garden before...
 

...view from left of garden before...
 

...view from right of garden after...
 

...view from left of garden after
 

Tring, Herts 15 yards hawthorn, blackthorn and crab apple laid South of England style. Most of this hedge had already been laid by volunteers and I was asked to lay the last 15 yards.
 

There was a nice spindle at the end of the hedge which was left to grow on as a tree
 

My section looking to end of hedge
 

This was an old field hedge set on a low bank. Other sections of the hedge included hazel and field maple.
 

Final tidying up in the late afternoon sun
 

The back of the hedge was a little unusual in having an unusually wide gap before the stock fence. Dead wood was left deliberately for habitat at the base of the hedge. It was subsequently discovered that cobalt crust fungus, terana caerulea was growing on dead wood here, one of only four sites in Hertfordshire it is known to exist. I laid the whole of this hedge again in 2020 see here