HEDGEROW
Hawkchurch, the east field
COURSE 1/526 DAYS STOCK48 GADS0/3
COURSE 1SOUND
0 stems · 0 woven
Course one. The plinth holds every stem you lay into it.
A hedge is built, not planted
Hedgerow
Lay a plinth, choose the species, then weave the courses in one at a time. Every stem goes in leaning against the one below it — a course that is not woven enough will not hold itself up, and it will shake out in your hands.
- Weave. A stem laid the same way as the one under it is not woven. Change your lean and the course locks.
- Leave room. Voids are where the spiders and the voles live. Fill every bay and you get a wall.
- Be judged late. The hedge is graded on its structure, and on what is living in it fifty years after.
Arrows or WASD to move · W and S to lean · Space to lay · J for an upright · E to pull one out · Enter to lay the course up · Esc to stop
Tap a bay to move, then lay it in. The bottom bar does the rest.
COMMISSION ONE OF FIVE
The Nursery Bank
Hawkchurch, the east field
The plinth
What the hedge is built into. A steep face will not take a plait and costs a day to drive uprights into.
The bill
Two or three species to cut. You cannot add more once you start.
Fifty years on
YEAR 0
COMMISSION ONE OF FIVE
It did not stand
Billhooks down
Paused
The hedge will wait. Nothing grows in the time you are standing here.
The craft
How a hedge is built
- The plinth. The ditch and the bank the stems are set into. A face past thirty-four degrees will not take a plait.
- The plinth course. The bottom course is held by the ground, so it is always woven. Everything above is not.
- Weaving. A stem is woven when the stem directly under it leans the other way. Change the lean to change the lock.
- Sound. A course holds if three fifths of its stems are woven and it covers three fifths of the run. Less than that and it shakes out and takes days to clear.
- The whole hedge. Even if every course passes on its own, the hedge needs seventy-two per cent woven overall or the first hard frost works it loose.
- Uprights. Firm, ugly, and worth nothing to an invertebrate. Where you cannot plait, you have no choice.
- Gads. Driven stakes every fourth bay. On a windward site the crown must be clamped into three of them or the wind takes the top of it.
- The gap. A gap left open is a highway for everything that lives in a hedge. A deadwood spar holds now and rots by year thirty-five. A living arch costs more and is still there in fifty.