Posts tagged pleaching

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June 9, 2011 · Filed under trees · Tagged , , ,

Pleaching

Image via Wikipedia

No, not me, but I could use a little off my butt!

As you can see by the gorgeous picture to my right, pleaching is a very formal look, and I love it!

It is basically a hedge on legs, this gives you a division quite high up in the air, but is a more interesting look than a hedge.

They are very common in English and European gardens. When I loved in London, I saw tons of them, boy I wish I had my digital camera then! Another form of this is a stilt hedge. From what I understand, (and I could be wrong), pleaching is trained on wires, and fairly narrow, where a stilt hedge is trained freehand, and wider on top.

I (I should say we) put the posts up last summer, and the wire was attached this spring. Now it is time to start the pleaching, yay!

Ian puts the wire up,

first one is 6 foot high off the ground.

After the next two levels are up, 8 and 10 feet,

I start tying the tree trunks to the wire.

On most of the trees the first layer of branches can start to be tied to the wire.

This is the only tree that is tall enough for the third layer to be tied to the wire.

I just bent the leader of the tree and tied it horizontally along the wire.  When branches shoot up vertically along the top, I will prune them back to either the second or third bud.

Here you can see the trees

before I started in crazy pruning mode,

 and after.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to start on this,

 I certainly do not know what I am doing, but it is a lot of fun.

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Le Divorce

July 14, 2010 · Filed under design, pleached trees, trees · Tagged

My husband wants a divorce. “Why”, you ask.  Did you have an affair, develop a gambling problem, or buy too many plants?   “No”, I say, “It is because of this”.

Notice anything?

What if you compare it to this photo? YES, it is a 12 foot post!!!!!

Here are a lot more 12 foot poles.

Is that more poles? Why yes, it is! Ten of them to be exact.

I dd not realize that there is nothing in the marriage vows about setting 12 foot poles in the ground, I thought they were standard, lol.

We  I mean I am now ready to think about pleaching my lindens. There does not seem to be a lot of information about it online, but from what I can find, two main methods. In one, you take bamboo canes and tie them to the tree and each other to run horizontally from tree to tree. Another method recommends running a wire between poles and tieing the branches to the wire. This method is exactly how my father trained the grape vines at the family farm, so I am going with this method. You have to have the room to put poles in, (and you have to get poles) and I do. Being the cheap thrifty Scot I am, I got my poles free! My fathers neighbour has hundreds of young cedars in his forest and he let my father have some when he was thining them out. Since I am not cementing them into the ground (they will be removed later) cedar is a good choice as it is rot resistant. So the poles are now up and my next step is to run a wire between poles at the six foot mark for my first tier of branches.

Now look at the view in the above picture, it is towards the Flora Glade. Something about framing a view (even though the trees have not even grown yet), it just makes the project feel like something is happening.

This is the second path out of the Lime Walk, it is towards the Kitchen Garden. I had a bit of a dilemma with this one, the poles are a bit of a pain to put up, and I only have one tree on the south side of the path to train. It seemed to be overkill to give it two poles by itself, so I am running the wire across the path. It will be marked with ribbon so no one walks into it (and I certainly do not have to worry, lol).

I would show you the view in the other direction, but there is nothing to see folks, nothing but lawn!

 

By the way, the tree that was in the path of the Lime Walk, we dug this out as well! You can see the tree in the first picture.

Now I have to be very nice to Ian he deserves it!

 

 

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Snip, Snip!

June 14, 2010 · Filed under design · Tagged , , ,

No, not my hair, although I did get about 4 inches cut off the bottom, my summer look, thank you for asking.

No, I am talking about the Lindens or Tilias, in my Lime Walk.

When I was picking up my trees at Yesterdays Garden in early May, I asked the owner, Karen, if it was too late to prune them this year. She said no, as long as they were pruned very soon, Tilias do not bleed like maples or birch.

So when my father came to visit, and I put him to work. He grew up on a grape farm in Niagara,  so was well used to pruning. Pleaching, looks a lot like the way grape vines grow, trained horizontally, and pruned to buds.  I am hoping to start the lowest branch of the Tilias at six feet.

So I got him some secateurs and he set to work.

You can see how low this tree branches.

I like to see a man, intent on his (my) work, lol.

All done! Hey, how come I have to pick up the branches, oh well, I guess it is a small price to pay.

 

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