At the beginning of August, I was working for a landowner near Guildford who had invited me to do some hedge-laying on his property. It transpired that the hedgerow in question was somewhat hidden behind a wall of overgrown cherry laurel and about 6 or 7 Leylandii trees.

It was a bit of a struggle to get close to the actual hedge at first, but I could see that there was about 30 metres of hedgerow to be laid, mostly hazel but also some hawthorn and blackthorn too. The first phase of the work was to clear the cherry laurel and Leylandii, so with the help of my nephew I spent two days clearing and burning the overgrowth. The work produced a fair amount of firewood for the landowner as an added bonus.

It was the middle of September before I returned to do the hedge-laying, having sourced the stakes and binders from a woodland close to my home. The hedge was fairly straightforward to do despite every stem being long and ‘leggy’ having been drawn upwards towards the light by the previously dense vegetation on all sides.

By early afternoon I had finished laying the hedge, and I set about adding the stakes and binders. I was a little worried as to what the finished hedge would look like as  there were gaps between some of the hazel stools which can mean gaps in the finished work.

Luckily, I had plenty of material to work with, and by the time I had finished the binding and had trimmed up the sides, the finished result was better than I could have hoped for. The landowner was delighted and couldn’t believe how much extra space I had liberated by removing the cherry laurel. Best of all, the hedgerow will now rejuvenate and will be an attractive garden feature for many years to come.