How to lay a hedge: South of England style on the Tenterden Weald.

Cutting technique · Updated 28 September 2026

The hedge laying tradition across the Kentish Weald goes back centuries. The High Weald's characteristic mosaic of small pastures enclosed by thick mixed hedgerows, largely intact from medieval enclosure, was maintained through generations by laying rather than machine trimming. Most of the old field boundaries around Tenterden, Rolvenden, Biddenden, Sandhurst and Wittersham still carry hawthorn and blackthorn of exactly the right age and stem diameter for laying: 30-100mm at the base, well-established but not so old that the stems are too rigid to bend cleanly.

What laying does that trimming cannot

Regular machine trimming thickens the outer shell of a hedge but does nothing for its internal structure. Over 15-20 years without laying, a trimmed native hawthorn develops a dense outer canopy that progressively shades the lower stems. The lower stems die off, and what remains is a hedge that is impenetrable at eye level but open and gappy at the base. That is exactly the wrong shape for a stock-proof or stock-deterrent field boundary: animals push through at the bottom, not over the top.

Laying addresses this directly. Each stem is partially cut at the base and folded over at a shallow angle, which forces strong vertical regrowth along the full length of the pleached stem, including at ground level. Done well, a laid hedge regrows into a solid, dense barrier within two growing seasons and should then hold its structure for another 10-15 years before it needs laying again. The laying cycle and the annual trimming cycle are not alternatives: laying is the periodic renovation that makes the long-term trimming cycle worthwhile.

The South of England style

The National Hedgelaying Society recognises eight main regional laying styles across England. The South of England style is the one used historically in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and it is what I use on Weald jobs here. The key distinction from the Midland style (which is more widely shown in general instructional videos) is the binder treatment: the South of England style uses hazel binders woven along both faces of the hedge, giving a neat, symmetrical finish rather than the single-sided binding of some northern styles. Stake spacing is 45cm (18 inches), which is fairly tight and gives a dense supporting grid for the newly-laid pleachers to grow through.

The Kent-pattern billhook is the traditional tool for this work. It has a deeper blade than the Berkshire pattern, with a short nose that is useful for working close to the ground in a tangle of base growth. For thicker stems above about 60mm I use an axe rather than the billhook, and a handsaw where the axe gives too blunt a cut surface.

Is your hedge a candidate for laying?

Not every hedge is suitable. Run through this before booking laying work:

• Species: hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple and hazel all plead well. Beech, yew, holly and conifers do not respond well to traditional laying and need different renovation approaches.
• Stem size: 30-100mm diameter at the base is the usable range. Under 30mm the pleachers are too whippy to hold their position reliably; over 100mm the stems often snap at the hinge rather than bending, even with a careful cut.
• Age: at least 8 years since the last laying or hard renovation. Younger growth lacks the bulk and the established root system to drive the strong regrowth that laying depends on.
• Condition: if the hedge is already dense to the ground and structurally sound, annual trimming is the better call. Laying is for renovation, not routine maintenance.
• Season: the job must fall in the dormant window, November to February. See the nesting season note below.

The step-by-step method

1. Walk the run and plan stem selection

Before cutting anything, walk the full length of the hedge and make decisions about which stems will become pleachers and which will be cleared. On a typical Weald hawthorn boundary that has had 12-15 years without attention you will find a wide range of stem sizes. Keep one substantial stem every 30-45cm and remove the thinner, crossing or dead material in between. Mark your chosen pleachers with a cane or spray mark so the decisions are visible when you start cutting. On a long run this planning pass is worth doing on a separate day: the quality of the finished lay depends almost entirely on the stem-selection decisions you make before the billhook touches anything.

2. Clear the base thoroughly

Cut all the removal stems right to ground level with a slasher or loppers, working from one end of the run to the other. The base needs to be clear before you drive any stakes. On Wealden clay, cut flush to the ground rather than trying to pull stumps: pulling blackthorn roots from waterlogged November clay is slow, damages the ground surface, and is unnecessary. The stumps of cleared stems will either die back or put up light regrowth that is easy to cut in the following season's maintenance. Rake and remove all the cut material from the base of the hedge before laying begins: a cluttered base makes the pleaching work harder and hides the ground where you need to drive stakes.

3. Cut the pleach: the partial cut at the base

This is the core technique of hedge laying. Working from the base of each selected stem, use the billhook (or axe for stems above about 50mm diameter) to make an angled cut approximately 100-150mm above ground level. Cut at a shallow diagonal, going approximately two-thirds of the way through the stem diameter. The angle matters: you are cutting with the grain of the wood, opening it downward on the face that will be under compression when the stem bends over.

The test for the right depth is whether the stem bends over smoothly to 30-45 degrees without snapping: a clean bend means you have left a hinge of live wood and bark (the cambium) intact, which is what keeps the pleacher alive after it is laid. If the stem snaps cleanly through, the cut was too deep. A snapped stem can often be propped at the right angle and will sometimes take anyway, but a clean living hinge is the reliable result. On larger stems 60-80mm diameter, using a saw to remove the excess wood on the cut face after the initial axe cut gives a cleaner hinge than the axe alone.

4. Drive stakes and lay the pleachers

Once you have the first three or four pleachers cut and ready to lay, drive the first stake at the starting end of the run. Hazel stakes are traditional in this part of the Weald and last 5-8 years in clay before they need replacing; ash is an acceptable alternative. Stakes should be roughly 1m long and 30-40mm diameter, driven with a club hammer to about 300mm depth. On waterlogged clay in November, a stake that goes in easily is not necessarily well set: test each one with a sideways push before laying any pleachers against it.

Space stakes at 45cm intervals. As you work along the run, lay each prepared pleacher at the 30-45 degree angle with its tip pointing in the direction of travel. All pleachers run in the same direction and at roughly the same angle: visual consistency is part of what the South of England style is judged on at competition, but it also means even light reaching all the laid stems, which drives even regrowth. Where a stem is shorter than the ideal, lay it as flat as 20 degrees rather than force it to an angle it will not hold.

5. Weave the binders and finish

With all the pleachers laid and all the stakes driven, weave the hazel binders horizontally along the top of the run. The South of England style uses binders on both faces: bring one binder along the front face, weaving between the stakes, then the next binder along the back face. This locks the stakes together and holds the pleacher tips in position against wind and the weight of the stems. Cut the binders cleanly where they run out rather than joining them mid-span: a binder end should sit against a stake, not float between two stakes, which creates a weak point. Trim any pleacher tips that project above the binder course with loppers for a clean finished line.

On a 30m run in the South of England style you will use approximately 40-45 stakes and 15-20 binder rods of 2m or longer. For a first laying job on Wealden clay, allow for sourcing local coppiced hazel if possible: hazel grown on the clay is more flexible than hazel from lighter soils and bends into the binding course without splitting.

6. Post-laying care on heavy clay

Wealden clay holds water and stays cold into spring, which can slow the callus formation at the pleach point and slightly delay the first season's regrowth. Where the base of the newly-laid hedge is sitting on waterlogged ground through December and January, a light mulch of wood chip along the base helps drainage and insulation. Do not apply mulch right against the stems: keep it 50-75mm clear of the base to avoid encouraging fungal growth at the cut surfaces.

The first regrowth usually shows as strong vertical shoots from the mid-section of the laid pleachers in April and May. By the following autumn the hedge will have put on 600-1,000mm of new growth from the base. Leave it alone for the first two years. At year three or four, a light trim to encourage branching and fill in the structure is appropriate, but the full first maintenance cut does not happen until year five or six when the new growth has consolidated into a proper hedge face.

When to call a contractor rather than doing it yourself

Hedge laying is a skilled craft and there is a significant gap between the result from a first-time attempt and an experienced layer. For a short garden boundary of 10-15m where the finish is seen every day from the house, I would recommend getting it done by someone with a track record. For a longer field boundary where the priority is stock-proofing rather than appearance, the method above gives a workable result even for a careful first attempt.

Any laying work inside the Tenterden conservation area boundary needs a stem diameter check before starting: anything above 75mm triggers the section 211 notice requirement (Ashford Borough Council, six-week notice, no fee for most applicants), and the CA-43 boundary on the High Street and the village conservation areas at Rolvenden and Biddenden all contain hedges that can hit that threshold on mature blackthorn and field maple. I do this check as part of quoting on any CA-adjacent job.

The South of England Hedgelaying Society runs occasional training days and competitions across Kent and Sussex, which are worth looking at if you want to learn the technique properly before attempting a full run. Regional competition results are a useful way to find layers with proven skills in this style in the county.

Sources: Country Living UK YouTube, "How to lay a hedge with master of the craft Paul Lamb" (November 2024; youtube.com/watch?v=oo6FulXBj00); Paul Lamb, "A Year with the Westcountry Hedgelayer" (Wainwright Prize-nominated, 2024), westcountryhedgelayer.com; National Hedgelaying Society, South of England style specification, hedgelaying.org.uk; High Weald National Landscape, Hedges guidance, highweald.org/guidance/land-management/hedges/; Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 s.1; Town and Country Planning Act 1990 s.211.