This is not as common a site as it once was. A properly laid hedge and right on the boundary of urban Brighton. Such skill, such precision, such artfulness in bending nature to man's will. They say that a job done well will last fifty years before it'll need doing again. Probably the finest livestock barrier devised, and growing and enriching itself naturally after this drastic surgery, although in this case the livestock is human on the eastern edge of town. Bordering land owned by the City, one can only assume some sort of unusually imaginative and benign decision was taken to adopt this far-from-cheap form of hedge maintenance. If you want chapter and verse on the craft of hedge laying, and it is poetry! - read Roger Deakin's 'Wildwood' which covers the subject wonderfully well.
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Bum. I have been out TODAY photographing a hedge in the process of being laid (the hedge being laid that is. Sadly) with the intention of blogging it on Monday. I had even decided to call it 'Hedge Fun'. We have much hedgelaying in Leicestershire and it is a thing of beauty to both watch it being done and the finished product. I was going to be a bit technical about it, but I guess it's too late now. Pipped!
Sorry WH...and I've been meaning to mention this for ages! Yours would have been far more descriptive.
The important thing is to draw people's attention to this reviving art. And I shall read Wildwood - I'm looking forward to seeing how Ratty and Mole coped with it...
Ah Mr.Deakin's 'Wildwood'. Just marvellous, and I was only going on about him last night. Read his 'Notes from Walnut Tree Farm' too. So often the stuff someone didn't intend to be published is amongst their best work.
And I also add my appreciation for hedge laying. It's the first work I saw my eldest brother doing, on a cold February afternoon. And so much better than that dreadful flaying by revolving blades or whatever.
Oooh - one of my favourite reads!
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