Hedgelaying - the Ultimate Bushcraft Activity?

[Nomad64]

Surprised to see (unless I missed them - quite possible) that most of the discussions of hedgelaying on here were nearly ten years ago so about time for a reboot.

There are a many different definitions of “bushcraft” but although more of a traditional country craft, an activity that involves taking a series of bushes (small and some not so small trees are also acceptable!) and crafting them using a variety of sharp tools and a lot of nowhow into a shape that is practical, beautiful, has a distinct regional identity and is a haven for native wildlife ticks most of the boxes.

Sadly with the changes in the British countryside after WW2 a lot of hedges were grubbed out and replaced with barbed wire and most of those that survived have been maintained with tractor mounted flails which leaves them bushy at the top but sparse at the base and not much use as a stock barrier or wildlife haven/corridor.

The good news is that there has been a significant resurgence in interest in traditional country crafts like hedgelaying both as a profession and as hobby. Enlightened (and wealthy) landowners are prepared to pay upwards of 10 a linear metre to get their hedges laid properly (only needs going every 15 - 50 years or so) and lots of hobbyists spent their winter weekends training and competing in the many local, regional and national championships.

The UK may not be ideal if your idea of “bushcraft” is limited to the idea of wandering RM style across the landscape, foraging for you food, lighting a fire by friction and building a shelter from branches but if you like playing around with sharp tools in the Great British countryside, either on your own or in the company of like minded souls it might be worth a go. FWIW, some of the best hedgelayers are women.

I’m very much at the beginner stage but can see how it could be very addictive - the better you get, the greater the satisfaction to be got from pitting yourself against the gnarliest sections of hedge.

It doesn’t cost a fortune, the North Somerset style course I did was £50 for 5 days and you don’t need fancy tools or kit - most of the billhooks and axes being used by the experienced hedgers were unbranded or the kind of old English brands you can get from carboots for a few £. Whatever clothing you wear is likely to get ripped by thorns so budget gear is recommended but if you want to rock your latest Fjallraven gear no one will care. Chainsaws are handy to have and make things easier but by no means essential.

Even if you aren’t interested in the competitive or social side of things, it could be a useful skill to have if you are trying to persuade a landowner to give you permission to use their land for other bushcrafting activities.

Hedgelaying is a winter activity but there are still a few courses and competitions this year which are often like mini festivals.

http://www.hedgelaying.org.uk/pg/diary.aspx?m=01/03/2019

Whether or not you are interested in getting “hands on” with hedges, this book is a great read about the history and role of hedges in the UK landscape.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Natural-Hi...13&s=gateway&sprefix=The+hedge,aps,340&sr=8-4

 

[Toddy]

That is such a good post

Mark, one of the other Mods did some 'hedging' and it sounded like he got a lot of satisfaction from it all

M

 

[Darryl of Sussex]

Cool post.

I’d love to learn more about hedgelaying as well as weaving.

 

[Klenchblaize]

I'd like to put every unemployed fit person to work hedglaying and make it a criminal offence to attack hedgrows with those destructive machines Farmers use to keep them in check.

There is something so incredibly sad and ugly about a Winter hedge so disfigured yet I never hear complaint from those who are normally very vocal aboout anthing environmentaly unfriendly.

God it makes me angry!!

K

 

[Toddy]

It annoys a lot of folks, but farmers no longer live with large farm steadings full of people and mechanisation is a big part of their lives. I'm pretty sure they'd rather have the hedges traditionally dealt with too, but they can't afford the labour costs.
Your idea about community service might be sound though

 

[Janne]

Hedges cut with tractor driven machinery are incredibly, incredibly ugly specially in the beginning, but is there a difference between an oldfashionly maintained vs modern cut when it comes to wildlife and such?
I suspect no difference.

So just a visual difference.
I would prefer farmers using horses instead of tractors, people instead of combines...

( get my meaning? Progress, efficiency, etc etc? )

When I bought the last house we had in UK, I became suddenly the custodian of around a kilometer of unmaintained, overgrown hedges.

My neighbour Mick taught me the bare basics in hedge laying.
It was hard work for both of us ( he did most of it) to get it back to shape. We could not use a tractor cutter because the trees were to big, ‘hedge’ to high and widespread.
So we only used chainsaws, axes and billhooks.

Hedge laying the ultimate bushcraft activity?
Certainly not. Nothing to do with bushcraft.
Agriculture, fieldcraft, something like that.

 

[Woody girl]

It's the original definition of bush craft.!
I did a lot of this with BTCV. A great way to obtain outdoor skills such as style building, drystone walling, fencing, scrub clearing, path maintainance, step building, and habitat management. It great healthy fun with like minded individuals and I've made realy good friends. Learned many skills, and had a lot of fun.
I can't agree more about flailed hedges. It's so ugly and leaves debris on the roads which causes punctures. My heart sinks everytime time I see it and I too feel angry. I still use my billhook in preference to an axe as I learned to do everything with it that you might use an axe for.
I once came across a couple of chaps" laying a hedge and saw they were not doing it right and basically destroying the hedge by cutting right through the wood and just leaving a tiny strip of bark. I had to jump in and put them right and explain what they were doing wrong. I showed them the correct method and went on my way. To this day the evidence is there. No hedge left before the point I jumped in. As the hedge was on top of a drystone wall that wall has now all but collapsed as there was nothing on top to draw the moisture out of the wall.
Their faces though when this ordainary looking housewife jumps in and starts explaining about all this and showing them how to do it properly and wielding a billhook was priceless!

 

[Janne]

Ugly or not, at least you have many hedges left.
In most countries the fields are either turned to forest culture, or the hedges have been removed since mechanisation took over after ww2, or removed because the roads have been widened.

 

[Klenchblaize]

I see where the Op's coming from as you get to:

1. Use lots of sharp and pointy hings!
2. Weald an axe
3. Learn about the different types and properties of timber.
4. Light small fires.
5. Eat and drink outdoors.
6. Enjoy the best type of tiredness that comes from physical rather than mental exertion.
7. Enjoy - I use the word adviseldly - all types of weather and the attendant cloud formations.
8. Deploy a tarp.
9. Drive a Land-Rover. (Other 4X4's are available.)
10. Leave something in the landscape you may be proud of.

K

 

[Woody girl]

I always looked forward to the ember baked potatos at lunchtime. Yummy.

 

[Macaroon]

Hedges cut with tractor driven machinery are incredibly, incredibly ugly specially in the beginning, but is there a difference between an oldfashionly maintained vs modern cut when it comes to wildlife and such?
I suspect no difference.
.

You are much mistaken, there is a huge difference to wildlife between a row of sticks with growth at the top and a well cared for hedge which is thick from the bottom up. Hedges, in their proper form, are the safe highways that most small mammals, amongst other critters, use to travel in safety; vastly different to what amounts to a row of bare sticks in the ground which makes them easy prey, and that's not considering the many species that would make their habitat in the lower levels of real hedges.

Machine flail-cut hedges are deserts and defunct highways to most living things that would otherwise live in them. Either your neighbour didn't teach you everything or you weren't listening

 

[Janne]

I posed a personal estetical view, followed by a question, so I can not be ‘much misstaken’!

I repeat: Hedges cut with tractor driven machinery are incredibly, incredibly ugly specially in the beginning, but is there a difference between an oldfashionly maintained vs modern cut when it comes to wildlife and such?

Mick could never learn me everything, he is one of those oldfashined countryside multi artists.
A dying breed, sadly!
Yes, I did listen.
But you, you need to read more carefully....



So is there a (researched) difference between the butchered hedges of today vs properly laid ones?

The vast majority of hedges I saw and observed were machine cut, but still had plenty of undergrowth, birds and such.

And as Woody Girl points out, a badly done laying can ruin/kill it. Which is worse that machine cutting.

 

[Kepis]

I repeat: Hedges cut with tractor driven machinery are incredibly, incredibly ugly specially in the beginning, but is there a difference between an oldfashionly maintained vs modern cut when it comes to wildlife and such?

Hedges were originally layed as stock fences, ie to keep animals under control and to stop them wandering into adjacent fields, the same can be said for dry stone walls around enclosures as well as the more modern wire stock fencing.

An old uncared for hedge as has been mentioned above, is sparse in the base meaning stock is free to push through the hedge and its doesnt allow the cover and safety sought by wildlife and as stated in the link to the NHLS i have put below, if a hedge is not maintained, eventually it just becomes a line of trees, a properly layed hedge doesn't allow stock through and as Macaroon quite correctly pointed out, if properly layed, a hedge is a wildlife refuge and highway.

Many modern hedges are machine cut because most of the field boundaries now have galvanised wire stock fencing, they do around here anyway, and its far cheaper and quicker to trim the tops and sides by machine, not to mention kinder on the machine should the flail hit the galvanised, meaning the hedge bases overtime become open and filled with gaps because they are no longer properly managed, most of the hedges around here are all open at the bottoms and filled with rabbit warrens, although the local Estate does have some hedges that are being maintained in the traditional way and they are replacing many of the hedges that were ripped out in the 70's and before.

It is noticeable around here that where the hedges have been replanted and/or properly layed the increase in wildlife numbers and species has increased, whereas some of the areas that rely on wire stock fencing are not barren of wildlife, but there is a significant decrease in the numbers and species.

If you need more info i suggest you look here https://www.hedgelaying.org.uk/pg/info/why.aspx or use your extensive googlefu.

 

[Zingmo]

One of the obvious differences with machine flailed hawthorn hedges at this time of the year is that they are completely devoid of blossom.

Z

 

[Janne]

What I hated most with the machine ‘trimmed’ hedges is the splintered branch ends. Unsightly and dangerous for dogs eyes.

On old pictures of Southern Sweden, every field was surfounded by a dry stome wall, many also with layed hedges.
Where there are agro fields - everything has vanished, and as a result there is almost no wildlife left, plus, during the autumn storms, much of the top soil blows away.
Where there are forest plantations, you only see fallen down stone walls, again- very little wildlife ( monoculture pine plantations are virtually sterile)

On the hedge surrounding my property, what Mick did with my feeble help was: first cut down the larger trees, maybe 4 inches fom the ground. Then cut away on the sides to thin it, then do the layering. Brambles we tried to remove completely.
The year after we went through and finished it.
I kept the blambles away all the time.
Before we touched it it was basically a strip of woodland, around 5 meters wide, with central trees, getting shorter/ younger towards the edges. A stone wall, largely fallen down, in the middle.

Not only did I win a lot of field, but we made an old green lane accessible again.

The hedges on the land, some of those we removed completely, some we restored, and the one between my property and his we let be.

Maintaining land is a very pleasurable work, but hard!

 

[Klenchblaize]

What I hated most with the machine ‘trimmed’ hedges is the splintered branch ends.

My point in fewer words.

I will happily conceed an earlier point regarding the limitations of a laid hedge from a wildlife habitat point of view, at least in its early stages of 'development', so quite happy to put those willing unemployed to work with prunining saw, loppers and anything else that leaves a clean & neat severed limb to reflect the first rays of an early Spring dawn!

K

 

[Broch]

Would they be shackled as they carry out this hard labour for you at under minimum wage? Only joking.

The reality is we live in a time when this level of manual effort can only be done on a volunteer basis; it's just too labour intensive to afford (either by our taxes or by landowners).

However, I agree, I lament the sight of flayed hedges; there's something thuggish or yobbish about it - as though there's no care at all.

 

[Woody girl]

The very words "flayed hedge" conjour a horror movie type reaction in me. You imagine something cruelly being cut to pieces and having its innards exposed by a sadistic unfeeling human.

 

[Broch]

The very words "flayed hedge" conjour a horror movie type reaction in me. You imagine something cruelly being cut to pieces and having its innards exposed by a sadistic unfeeling human.

Yep, that's exactly how it looks to me

 

[Klenchblaize]

The reality is we live in a time when this level of manual effort can only be done on a volunteer basis; it's just too labour intensive to afford (either by our taxes or by landowners).

Anything is possible post Brexit!

K