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Why a Hedge Needs Laying At All

Left alone, a hedgerow turns into a line of spindly trees. The base goes bare, gaps open at ground level, and the whole thing stops doing the job it was planted for — holding stock in and weather out. Hedgelaying is the old answer to that problem. Rather than cutting a hedge to the ground and letting it sprout back as an unruly thicket, you partly sever each stem near the base and bend it over at an angle, leaving a sliver of living wood — the hinge — to keep feeding the plant.

The result is a living fence: thorny and dense at the bottom where you need it, tapering at the top, and thick enough to shelter nesting birds and small mammals. A well-laid hedge will hold its shape for fifteen to thirty years before it needs laying again, and along the way it crops nuts, berries and hips that a flailed hedge never will.

When to Lay, and What to Take With You

The laying season runs from roughly the end of October, once the sap is down and the leaves are off, through to early March. In England, hedge cutting is not permitted between 1 March and 31 August, so plan to finish well before the birds begin nesting — there is no sense in laying a hedge and then disturbing a blackbird's clutch in it.

Work in frost-free, dry weather where you can; frozen wood splits badly, and wet ground makes for miserable footing. A basic kit looks like this:

• A sharp billhook — the traditional cutting tool, and still the best for stems up to wrist thickness.
• A bow saw or lightweight chainsaw for anything thicker, plus a hedging axe if you have one.
• Thick leather gloves, a mallet for driving stakes, and a hone or file to keep an edge.
• Stakes and binders: hazel, sweet chestnut or willow, cut to roughly 1.5m and 2m respectively.
• Proper personal protection — chainsaw trousers and helmet for any saw work, and boots with a decent toe.

The Cuts That Do the Work

Every laid stem gets the same treatment, and beginners are usually surprised by how little wood you actually cut away. The main cut, sometimes called the pleach, is made close to the ground — a hand's breadth up — angled downwards and inwards, slicing through roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the stem. You are not cutting the stem off. You are persuading it to fold.

On thicker stems, make a small relieving cut a hand's width above the first, from the opposite side, so the wood collapses cleanly instead of splitting and letting rot into the heart. Then lay the stem over at about 30 degrees from the ground, all stems leaning the same way, and trim the top so the finished hedge sits roughly level.

Once the pleachers are laid, drive a stake every 45cm or so, weave the binders along the top in a neat line, and pack the brash into the middle of the hedge. That deadwood filling — the bulk — is what makes the whole thing solid and gives cover right down to the ground.

Regional Styles Worth Knowing

Hedging grew up place by place, so the styles vary as much as the dialects. You will meet several across a single county boundary:

• Midland Bullock — long, low and deeply angled, bulked out with deadwood. Common across Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Leicestershire.
• Devon — laid on top of an earth and stone bank, which is a habitat in its own right.
• Welsh Border — tightly woven and densely staked, neat as basketwork.
• Double brush — stems laid from both sides towards the centre, a southern counties speciality.
• Yorkshire — uses a top binding of twisted hazel or willow running along the stakes to lock the hedge down.

Wildlife, and the Hedgerow Harvest

The reason conservation bodies love a laid hedge is simple: the dense base is where things live. Hedgehogs, dormice and harvest mice use it as a corridor, yellowhammers and linnets nest in the tangle, and the spring blossom feeds early pollinators.

Then comes the foraging, and this is where the season rewards you. Late summer brings blackberries, elderberries and hazelnuts. From September, sloes for gin — pick them after the first frost if you can — plus rosehips for syrup, crab apples, damsons and bullace for jelly. A few rules keep it honest: always get the landowner's permission, never strip a hedge bare, leave plenty for the birds, and be certain of your identification before anything goes in a pan. A freshly laid hedge will not crop heavily for a year or two, so be patient with it.

Your First Day on the Hedge

Start small. Two or three metres is plenty for a beginner, and you will learn more from that stretch than from half a field. Work in one direction, keep your billhook sharp, and watch the hedge in front of you rather than the one you have finished. Reading the stems — which one to lay, which to cut out, where the natural gaps fall — takes time, and nobody gets it right the first season.

If you can, learn alongside someone who has done it for years. Local hedgelaying groups, county shows and rural skills courses run beginners' days through the winter, and there is no substitute for watching a good pleacher make that fold look effortless. Take your time, keep your hinges intact, and by March you will have a boundary that will outlast you.