Marches

Thanks for the advice on Blackthorn. I was aware it would sucker and can throw them out quite far into a field, it didn't occur to me that shoots inside a hedge would die but that makes sense. I guess I could cut out most of the sycamore and elder on my side then just plant hawthorn in the gaps or maybe a row of it. It's not laying it but it might be in better health if anyone ever does.

So I decided to lay a hedge adjoining my house today. The hedge is very tall because it's full of sycamore and elder. Quite nice for privacy but it's happy around the bottom and my dogs keep going into the farmer's field next door and have been on the road from there. So wanting to improve the hedge anyway and being too tight to buy wire netting I decided I'd have a go at laying it. I did some hedge laying about 10 years ago at agricultural college and did some reading. It's not looking good though. I've done about 3 meters of it and don't know whether to continue or not. Here are the problems - •It's that overgrown on my side (I've been here a year, I wouldn't have let it get like that) that it's nearly two hedges running beside each other. Farmer's side is gnarled up hawthorn that's on its last legs from machine cutting. Upon starting to lay the hedge I realised my side is about 80% sycamore in the process of becoming trees. Lots of elder in it too that I've removed. •My plan was to just lay my side and leave the farm side of it but I don't think that's going to work. •Farm side has a rickety old barb wire fence that won't keep cows out if the hedge isn't layed properly and I didn't really want to go offering to put them a new fence in (which I'm good at and know the farmer well enough, but I didn't want the cost). I'm not sure if I can just lay one side and have it turn out good. And in just laying sycamore, ideally most of that needs to be out and hawthorn layed and some new plants put in. I'm wondering now whether I'm better just cutting the sycamore down to the actual level of the hedge, cutting off the pleachers I've layed and letting them coppice. Maybe I could plant some Blackthorn and let it sucker a bit to fill the gaps along with the coppiced stools. If both sides of the hedge were mine I wouldn't worry too much but I think I'm going to wreck the hedge if I carry on trying to lay just one side which is mostly trees. It's dark now so can't get pictures until tomorrow. I'm sure I could do an ok job of it if I was a bit more confident and was prepared to do both sides and fence it off. I don't think how I've gone about it though is going to work.