7 Step Hedge Laying Routine with Bahco Billhook on a Midland Style Boundary

Step one is reading the line before steel touches wood. A Midland-style hedge, the form laid across much of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, carries the pleachers on a single side, with the brush facing the field and stock kept off the new growth. Pleachers are the half-cut stems that will be bent into the line.

Clear the base first. A Stihl FSA 60 R, the 36-volt cordless strimmer, will take nettle and dead grass out of a quarter-mile boundary without a fuel can following the job. The stool has to be visible before any judgement can be made about the cut. Mark the direction of lay, uphill on sloping ground, so sap can continue to feed the stem after it has been bent over.

The pleach cut, and why three-quarters is the number

The cut that makes or ruins the hedge is the pleach. Sever roughly three-quarters of the stem at an angle near the base, low enough for the stub to disappear once the hedge is laid. Leave a tongue of living bark and cambium, because that strip keeps the stem alive after it folds down to around 30 degrees from horizontal.

The Bahco 2448 billhook is a single-edged pattern with a 230mm blade. On a wrist-thick hawthorn, it usually makes the pleach in two or three strokes. Cut downward and slightly into the slope of the stem, so the heel of the laid pleacher sits tight against the stool.

Depth is the danger. Cut too far and the stem parts cleanly, then dies within a season. Leave too much wood and the stem tries to stand upright again. The bark left at the back of the cut is the working bridge for the sap, and the whole line depends on that narrow living connection.

Blackthorn asks for a slower hand. It is harder and more brittle than hawthorn, so an extra stroke is usually safer than forcing a heavy swing. A snapped blackthorn pleacher cannot be rescued, which leaves less room for impatience.

Keep the billhook edge sharp enough to slice newspaper. A dull hook crushes the cambium where it should slice, and crushed tissue heals poorly. A puck stone or fine diamond plate kept at the field edge will bring the bevel back in under a minute between sections.

After each cut, bring the pleacher down into the line while the hinge is still clean. Work the stem into place with pressure along its length, not with a jerk at the tip. The laid stem should sit low, tight, and alive, with the brush building density on the field side.

Setting the stakes

Stakes go in after a run of pleachers has been laid. Drive hazel or sweet chestnut stakes, about 1.5m long and sharpened to a point, every 450mm along the line.

They pin the pleachers down and give the binders a firm upright to weave against. Keep the spacing even enough for the finished top to hold tension along the whole run.

Binding the heathers along the top

The binders are called heathers in the Midland tradition. They are long, whippy hazel rods woven along the top of the stakes in a continuous twist. Their job is to lock the stakes together and press the laid stems into one living wall.

Use three or four binders per run. Weave each rod in front of one stake and behind the next, alternating along the top. Where two runs meet, twist the ends together so the line keeps its grip across the join.

This is the stage where the hedge begins to read as a boundary again. Tension matters more than neatness. Pull each binder firm, then ease it into the turn so the hazel does not crack at the twist.

A cracked binder works loose through winter frost. Once that happens, the top of the hedge lifts and the pleachers lose the pressure that keeps them settled. The binders should hold like a single cord across the stakes, with no slack sections between uprights.

Trim the stakes level once the binding is finished. A single billhook stroke about 50mm above the binding leaves enough wood above the twist and lets rain run off the cut top before it soaks into the pith.

The finished height for a Midland boundary sits around 1.1 to 1.2m. At that height, the hedge thickens from the base and avoids a leggy shape. By the second spring, the laid pleachers throw vertical growth from every node. Within three years, the line is stockproof again without a single strand of wire.

Where the strimmer earns its keep

The FSA 60 R is useful at the start and the end of the work. It clears the base before cutting, then tidies the field margin after the hedge is laid. In spring, keep it away from the laid face.

Those new vertical shoots are the growth the whole job is meant to produce. A strimmer line can remove them in a second. Mark a 300mm exclusion strip along the laid face, then cut only the field side and the headland.

With the AK 30 battery, the FSA 60 R gives roughly 40 minutes of continuous cutting through light material. It lasts longer when the trigger is pulsed through thin grass. On a long boundary, two batteries in rotation cover a morning.

Use the line head for this work. A brush blade that grazes a pleacher can tear bark from the stem, and intact bark is what keeps the laid line alive.

Planting the shaded strip under the hedge

A laid hedge throws a band of shade on its north side. That strip widens as the regrowth thickens, and slug pressure tends to gather there. Damp, shaded, sheltered ground is hard on hostas, especially where slugs can strip soft leaves overnight.

Plants with tough or aromatic foliage handle the strip better. Hardy geraniums such as Geranium phaeum, the dusky cranesbill, hold up under hedge shade and are usually left alone by slugs. Astrantia, with its papery bracts, and the fern Dryopteris filix-mas both colonise the damp strip without turning into slug feed.

Pulmonaria fits the timing of the hedge. It flowers early, before the hedge leafs up and takes the light, then carries on as ground cover once the canopy closes.

Planting time matters at the north-facing base. Put the perennials in during the shoulder season while the laid pleachers are still bare. The roots then get a few weeks of light before the regrowth shades everything below 600mm.

Late planting leaves the perennials sitting through their first summer in deep shade. They often sulk and fail to bulk up. The hedge bottom also holds water, while leaf litter rots down into a soil much closer to woodland than open border ground.

Sharp-drainage plants struggle there. Mediterranean plants can rot off by midsummer in that damp edge. The better test is simple: can the plant live with shade, moisture, leaf litter, and the slug traffic that gathers at the base of a thickening hedge?

The hedge answers part of that question only after it has grown on. How wide will that damp shadow become once the regrowth closes over the lower stems?