![]() ![]() Willow would work very well but it doesn't make the best hedge, in my opinion. We don't have a huge amount of elder but I suspect I could use another, suckering plant - there is lots of elm around here, for example, although in not sure if I could find many suckers of the correct size. I may be doing just that at some point as I plan to put in a few kilometers of new hedgerow and I want to avoid wire fences where possible. I can imagine that rooted uprights might be an advantage in some situations - such as fencing an area that will, ultimately, be hedged. ![]() I will have to have a go as it does seem to be the traditional way to do it in most places. That is interesting, I wasn't aware that you could twist the half/riven rods. Skandi Rogers wrote:The times I have seen people twisting were with half sticks as well which probably makes it easier. ![]() Access can be problematic and, so I've been told, hazel is pretty resilient anyway - some of the old boys have said people used to cut it quickly and without much care and it rarely does the stool much damage. Most of my stools have been cut this way, although I'm not too fastidious. If it fails at the base of the uprights (which would be my guess) then it may be possible to replace those and carry on - otherwise it is firewood!Īs for sloping outwards - you're absolutely correct. Hazel is quite perishable and it is in direct contact with the ground. I'm fully expecting the fence to fail after a couple of years. If I repeat the technique then I'll use more uprights - mostly as I struggled to find long enough rods to make it past three uprights for it to brace on. The pressure of the woven rods holds the whole thing rigid and it didn't budge in the recent storms we had here. The woven fence that I have made, however, is plenty strong enough so long as the uprights remain in the ground. The gate that I am making it using that for the hinges and I keep breaking the rods - I think because I have left them too long and they have started to dry, but I'm not certain.įor hurdles being moved (they were traditionally used to make temporary sheep folds and movable fencing) I believe the twisted ends are more critical. I've had a go at the twist-and-turn technique but not had a great deal of success with it. I definitely could have made a better job of the braid (known as heathering or ethering, locally) had I been able to source longer lengths of dogwood. I topped the fence with a braid made up of some local dogwood, mostly for a striking colour-contrast but also to firmly secure the woven rods in place. I tried to alternate the direction of the butts (the larger, bottom end of the rod) to keep the height of the fence even. Around these, I wove thinner pieces of hazel (mostly, some sallow) and clipped off the edges. The fence has been made by hammering large diameter poles into the ground to create a framework. I will hang a gate soon to complete this process. Finally, and the purpose of this post, is to share the hurdle fence that I have woven to enclose the back garden. The bark that I removed from the rods has made a beautiful mulch. I recently moved house, to be closer to our land, and used some of the thicker, straighter poles to hang curtains. The coppiced hazel poles have already proven themselves to be very useful. I've been cutting the hazel and ash trees within 0.25 acres and will continue to establish the coppice over a few winters. Oak will also coppice but needs to be cut whilst relatively young. Ash, hazel and any of the Salix species (the sallows and willows) will coppice readily, although hazel is the most prevalent. The woods that I manage contains mostly oak, ash, hazel, sallow and some thorns. In England and Wales, a coppiced woodland is typically home to a much greater variety of species that a closed-canopy, "climax" woodland. Aside from these products, coppicing also creates a mosaic of habitats within a woodland as the light level at the woodland floor changes each year. This means cutting the trees down to just above ground level, ideally at a 30 degree slant outwards to shed water, so that they will resprout a large number of long, thin, straight "rods" over the coming years.Ĭoppicing used to be very common in the UK but the perceived value of coppiced, wooden products has been lost: bean poles and pea sticks have been replaced with bamboo and polypropylene netting fences are now made from treated timber or galvanised steel rather than stakes woven hurdles for building replaced with plasterboard. Since January I have been cutting a portion of woodland for coppice. ![]()
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