Creating 'dead hedge'

In our grounds we are lucky enough to have quite a lot of trees, many of them quite elderly and so have a tendency to fall down in high winds. These include a lot of hazels which were coppiced many decades ago but have been left for a long time. This has caused their oldest limbs to get too big and to lean at dangerous angles often tearing away at ground level. We have cut back a few and decided to try our hand at making ‘dead hedge’ as a good use of the wood produced.

Dead hedge is a hedge made entirely out of wood stakes as uprights and brush wood as the barrier. Hazel is perfect as the nice straight uprights make great stakes (which can be used for many other things too). The only issue being that they need to sharp end to enable you to bang them into the ground. (total credit to my husband and a few hours with a machete). The stakes are set in pairs every 60cm with 30cm between the pair. Then once they are as solid as possible you stack any spare brushwood you have between them. packing it down as much as possible.

We have now completed 30m of this hedging along one side of the orchard. This needed to be fenced down the side that was open to the stream so that we can let our 3 sheep in to cut the grass later in the year. It’s definitely much slower to put up that stock fence but more aesthetically pleasing to our eyes and probably easier to maintain. Stock fence posts will last around five years or more but replacing them when they rot is a pain. The dead hedge will need a few more stakes added each year to strengthen it but provides somewhere to keep our brushwood (rather than just in piles around the site). It will also provide a new wildlife habitat for birds and insect as well as being a practical barrier.