I wrote this short review of Rob Wolton’s excellent book on hedges for the Devon Rural Skills Trust’s (DRST) summer newsletter. As it’s now autumn (or at least feels like autumn) I thought it would be worth re-publishing here. Enjoy.
Eddie Pollard, Max Hooper and Norman Moore’s influential book Hedges (Collins New Naturalist Library, number 58) is now a half-century old and an up-to-date treatment has been long overdue. … Read more
Both of these pieces were written as social media posts for Devon Rural Skills Trust. They are of their moment, and I hope they haven’t dated too quickly; what additions I have made are in square brackets (and my apologies for the repetition). The first site was on a hilltop near Ivybridge, south Devon, with glorious views and the traffic-hum of the A-38 ever present. … Read more
16 October 2021: Blackthorn
To begin I took home some blackthorn, cut out of a gorgeously dense Devon-style hedge beside a deeply-sunken lane on the edge of Dartmoor. Blackthorn is one of the many magical trees in British folklore, a gateway into an enchanted world. I split the recovered branch wood, sawed it to length, removed the bark and the waste wood with a hand axe, and began to carve. … Read more
Thought I would pull together the social media posts on the first two courses Devon Rural Skills Trust has run since the long, frustrating Covid shutdown. They were written, of course, to aid the charity’s publicity but I hope they tell a story too, however briefly.
25 September
It means so much to be back running courses again after 18 months of uncertainty. … Read more
Jim Jones jokes that his Ontario hedge is probably the only one in the world to have been laid using black walnut. The tree is indigenous to North America; laid hedges are anything but native.
Although early European settlers brought their skills with them few of their hedges survive. There was a short-lived fashion for Midland-style hedges, as gentleman farmers transported a little bit of the enclosure era across the Atlantic, but theirs too are largely gone. … Read more