Bocage, windbreak, flowering, fruiting, defensive, evergreen ... The hedge comes in all forms. Forgotten, the old hedges were used by man as diversified tools, links, handles, stakes... Let's discover these practical and handy tools for the modern gardener.
The hedge and the farmer
A few decades ago, hedges crisscrossed the landscape, bordered plots of land and kept herds at bay. Sources of biodiversity, regulating water flows, windbreaks, for generations they found their place in the agricultural ecosystem. Farmers combined ecological interest and practical utility.
The branches of the "tetards", pruned and re-pruned trees with thick and twisted trunks, were used as fodder. The faggots heated the bread ovens. The bunches of flexible branches were used as brooms. Most of the wooden tools were renewed at the edge of the cultivated plots, from the simple tie to the pickaxe handle.
A piece of string
The gardener always needs a link, a piece of string, raffia, copper wire... A tomato to tie, a vine to guide, two stakes to tie, and the search for a tie begins. Pocket money? No. Going back home ? For a branch... What about the hedge, at the edge of the garden, within reach?
The willows, pruned near the short trunk, have given off young shoots, long, thin and flexible. They turn without bending, without breaking, and can tie, bind. From time immemorial, wicker has followed the vine, the ancient link of the winegrowers.
Other shrubs of the hedge were used as a link, then in braiding for basketry. Baskets, hats, trellises, were conceived, repaired, near the blood dogwood, Vitex agnus-castus, viburnum lantana, clematis...
The spade handle broke...
If the link is essential to the gardener, the handle is no less so. Spade, hoe, weed, plant... Every tool needs a handle, which always breaks at the wrong moment. Sundays and holidays, the old hedge is always there. If the ash was known for its flexibility, its tenacity, the field maple, less used, compact and homogeneous, was also used for any tool handle.
Mediterranean, renowned in its time for its properties equal to ash, the hackberry outclasses it for its robustness and flexibility. Wood of all the manufactures, stretchers, oars, axles, it was cultivated to produce forks. The shoots were pruned and shaped in order to harvest the ready-made tool. Shrub of the hot regions, the climatic warming encourages to register it in any plantation of hedge.
Tomato stakes
Less demanding in terms of mechanical properties, stakes are found on shrubs with straight branches, with straight and vigorous shoots. Hazelnut will provide beautiful stems that can be reused for several years if they are protected in winter. This gives the hedge time to regenerate.
The black locust, commonly called acacia, grows beautiful vertical shoots, thorny but solid, durable.
The blood dogwood produces long, flexible branches in the spring, then rigid, with branches that are easily lopped off. The longest stems are used as stakes to support large plants and climbers.
Another hedge shrub, with the hardest wood and the tastiest berries, the male dogwood. It was used as a wedge to split wood, harrow teeth, ladder rungs. Its stakes are extremely solid. The grandfathers found a certain interest there...
Grandfathers and children
...And knew how to recognize reliable wood that could withstand the weight of years. The cane was harvested on the edge of the meadow. Dogwoods, but also serviceberry and hazelnut trees, were appreciated. Sometimes honeysuckle was mixed in, and its imprint marked the wood with an elegant spiral. The male dogwood, so hard, became also javelin... For the pleasure of children, who remember their grandfather, find the yew, the cytise and the ash to make bows, the elder for whistles and blowpipes, the boxwood for toys, buttons and spoons.
Maintaining an old hedge, planting an all-purpose hedge, in spite of the blackthorn's readiness to escape, the bramble's readiness to go prospecting, is an encounter. Locate the handles of his future grelinette, the flexible branch that will be used to repair his straw hat. Twine the honeysuckle around the grandfather's next cane. Preparing a long vine stake. So many gestures of another rhythm. And new plantings to be made, for shrubs combining diversity, flowering, and practicality.
