Hedging

Glossary

Bank: A raised earthwork, usually acting as a barrier and often faced with turf or stone. To build or repair a bank.
Batter: The slope of a bank, hedge or wall expressed as an angle or as a ratio of horizontal to vertical dimensions.
Beaver: The thin twigs of the pleachers on the far or field side of Midlands type bullock hedge. Also known as frith (Surrey).
Binding: Flexible stems or wire laced along the top of a hedge to hold the pleachers in place. Also known as edders, ethering, heathers, heathering or winders.
Bowing: Pleachers which are bent out before being tucked between two stakes, in order to protect the cut stools of other pleachers (Wales).
Brash: Small twiggy or thorny branches, also known as brush.
Bullock fence: Any bank, fence, hedge or wall, usually 4-4'6" (1.2-1.4m), designed to contain cattle.
Butt: The larger, basal end of a tree or branch.
Byrdn: Brushy deadwood cuttings pushed in at the base of a hedge to protect the cut stools (Powys).
Cag: Short ends of a trimmed branch left on a pleacher to help hold other pleachers in place.
Chain: The traditional unit of hedge measurement, 22 yards (20m).
Comb: The top or crown of a bank (Devon).
Coppice: The practice of periodically cutting down trees nearly to ground level and allowing them to regenerate.
Course: A horizontal layer of turfs.
Crook: A deadwood stem with a sharply hooked top, pushed down through a laid hedge to hold pleachers in place. Also known as a tie (Wales and the S. West).
Crop: A stem cut off where it emerges from the laid hedge and left to act as a living stake. Also known as a cropper, pole or standard (Wales).
Cut and lay: The process of cutting part way through a standing tree and then bending and positioning (laying or layering) the stem to form a barrier. Also known as cut and pleach, pleach, plash or (South West) steep and lay or stoop and lay.
Deadwood: Any wood which is cut or broken off completely.
Ditch: A long narrow trench dug as a boundary, barrier or drain. In Ireland and parts of Wales, a bank or other raised barrier.
Double brush: The practice of bringing in pleachers from both sides of a hedge to a central line of stakes in order to create a wide, symmetrical sheep fence (Wales).
Double dig: The process of preparing a planting bed in two stages, first by removing the soil to a depth of one spit, and then by forking the soil at the bottom of the trench to further break it up.
Face: The steep side of a bank or wall.
Far side: The side of the hedge normally without a ditch or steep bank face, also known as the field side.
Fence: A structure serving as an enclosure, barrier or boundary, loosely used to include hedges, banks, ditches or dykes.
Hedge: A line of closely planted shrubs or low-growing trees forming a fence or boundary, usually one or two rows wide.
Laying: (See 'Cut and lay'.)
Leaders: The tallest shoots of a plant where most vertical growth takes place.
Ley farming: The practice of using a field for arable and pasture in rotation.
Livewood: Any wood which is not cut or broken off completely from the supply of nutrients from the roots.
Near side: The side of the hedge, normally with a ditch or steep bank face, from which most hedging work is done.
Packing: Tamped earth fill supporting the turfs or the facing stones in a bank.
Pleacher: A live stem cut and laid to form a stock barrier. Also known as a plasher, plesher, pletcher, plusher, sear or stolling.
Pollard: The practice of cutting a tree's branches back to the main stem and allowing new ones to sprout.
Quick: A thorn, usually hawthorn, plant or hedge. Also known as quickset.
Shard: A gap in a hedge or bank.
Sheep fence: Any bank, fence, hedge or wall, usually lower than a bullock fence, designed primarily to contain sheep.
Single brush: The practice of bringing in pleachers mainly from one side of a line of stakes to create a relatively, narrow, rather asymmetrical hedge (Wales).
Spit: A rough unit of depth measurement used in digging, equal to the length of a spade blade.
Stake: A deadwood pole or post driven into the hedge to hold the pleachers in place.
Stem: The living trunk of a shrub or tree.
Stool: The stump or cut base of a shrub or tree from which grow new shoots. Also known as the rootstock.
Stub: The projecting portion of stem which remains to be trimmed off the stool after a pleacher is cut and laid. Also known as a stob or ear.
Sucker: A shoot springing from a root or underground part of a stem at some distance from the parent plant and eventually becoming a separate individual.
Thatching: A fault in turf hedging, when the bottom of one course of turfs is allowed to project over the top of the course below (Devon). Also known as datching (north Devon).
Thorn: General term for the hawthorn or whitethorn (Crataegus spp, usually Crataegus monogyna) or the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa).
Tiller: A sapling, also known as a teller.
Top cut: To trim the leaders of a shrub or tree at a point well above ground level.
Trim: To cut back the smaller branches of a shrub or tree in order to keep the plant from growing too large, or train it to a desired shape. Also known as breast, brush, pare or switch.
Turf: Surface earth filled with the matted roots of grass and other plants, cut out for use in facing a bank.
White: The freshly cut surface of a stool, pleacher or trimmed branch. Also known as burr (Wales).