Creating a 'Fedge'

CREATE 'edge' in your garden by planting a willow hedge, or 'fedge'.

SIMON SHAKESPEARE explains just how easy it is to create an 'instant' boundary or windbreak.

The rhythmic flow of the seasons is forever turning, without ending or beginning. We may choose to listen to the music and join in the dance, sometimes smooching lazily, sometimes whirling like dervishes, but the music never stops (and, as with all dances, there are some who seem oblivious to the beat and stick awkwardly but fastidiously to their own invented rhythm, throwing discord around the dance floor).

Yet overlaying this unending rhythm we have contrived our own pattern in the shape of the calendar, which does have a beginning and an end - and, as such, affords us the opportunity at the end of one year and the beginning of the next to look back over what has gone before and look forward to what lies ahead.

In constructing this pattern, we have created 'edge' - a temporal edge zone between one time frame and another. It is an aspect of the mysterious and magical nature of the universe that where there is edge, diversity is maximised. In other words, if you put two things or events close enough to each other that they can interact, you create a third 'zone' where uniqueness occurs.

We can see this principle at work in nature if we look at the example of estuaries: an edge zone between fresh water and salt water that contains not only species from each of the two habitats, but crucially additional species that are unique to this third zone.

So in our temporal edge zone at New Year we may undertake an assessment of where we are at and where we want to be heading, an opportunity that doesn't occur at other times of the year. It is no coincidence either that this edge zone occurs at the most dormant time of the year when, as I mentioned in my last article, we are at our most introspective.

But how can this be applied to our gardens? Regular readers of this column will already be familiar with herb spirals and my preference for wavy lines over straight ones (again, maximising edge). Another way of increasing, indeed creating, edge in a garden is through the introduction of well-designed and well-placed hedges (the very word 'hedge' couldn't be a more obvious clue).

So let's look at what hedges do and why we plant them. Often hedges are used to mark the boundaries to a plot, or they may be used to control stock or as a windbreak. In terms of Permaculture design (where we try to maximise the number of distinct functions for an element within a design), hedges can also be designed to provide food in the form of fruit or nuts; firewood from thinnings; likewise biomass for composting; a wildlife refuge; and an aesthetic benefit through judicious selection of species.

How important each of these benefits is will, of course, determine where in the garden a hedge is to be placed and also what species of plant(s) will be chosen. If we are looking at tempering the effects of wind within the garden, hedging can provide even greater benefits: it is not widely known that the effects of wind will be exacerbated by the introduction of a solid (ie, non-permeable) windbreak. It is no surprise therefore that, after a storm, lapped larch fencing panels are to be found strewn across the lawns of suburbia. A windbreak should have a degree of permeability (40% to be precise), which lets some of the wind through. This has the effect of slowing down the wind instead of causing turbulence, which can actually accelerate the wind over the windbreak. Hedging, not surprisingly, can provide just the right amount of permeability to slow the damaging effects of wind. Furthermore, it has been found that these ameliorating effects are carried over a distance approximately 20 times the height of the hedge!

Typically, if we are considering a traditional choice of species for hedging, such as yew, box or beech, we need to be thinking in terms of five to 10 years until maturity. But there is a quicker way: one that uses native species, is quick to establish and easy to maintain, is self-replicating and has limitless potential as a material for creativity.

I'm talking of course of willow, the singularly most interesting feature of which, from our perspective as hedge designers, is that a cutting taken from a living plant will invariably strike if planted before the main growth stage of spring (hence the bit about self-replication). Not only that, but the same applies to rods of whatever length is available. So rods that have been cut from a single year's growth (which, if we are talking about a very fast species such as salix viminalis, Bowle's Hybrid, may be up to 12 feet long) can be planted in threes, a foot between each group, and interwoven to provide an instant hedge (or 'fedge') that will fill out with new growth within the first year.

Most of the new growth appears at the top of the hedge and at the end of the first season cuttings can be taken to plant another new hedge - or they can be woven into the hedge to make it thicker, strengthening the hedge still further.

It is worth mentioning that willow is often frowned upon because of a perceived threat that it poses to house foundations and underground drains. And these fears are not completely unfounded, so use discretion when planning your positioning.

There is something very satisfying in using willow as a design material in the garden, not just because of it's endless creative flexibility, but also because you are using the growth of the previous year's planting to create additional new growth and diversity in the forthcoming year - a sort of multiplier effect - which, as we continue