Practice what you pleach

With the beautiful weather we’ve been experiencing in recent days, it was too tempting to not take advantage of a few spare hours and have a leisurely wander around the local villages.  The birds were singing, golden primroses spattered the verges, and from one garden came the quiet hum of an electric lawnmower - spring felt like it was ready to explode onto the scene.

Front gardens can be a wonderful form of inspiration and in one, a stretch of pleached limes above a dry-stone wall showed the hand of an experienced gardener.  One or two branches were being gently tempted down to the horizontal by the addition of weights in the form of small stones tied to their tips.  Others had been attached to neighbouring limbs where in time, maybe a decade, they will fuse to create a permanent connection.

This joining of two branches is known as inosculation.  The word comes from the Latin ‘to kiss’ or ‘to unite.’  ‘Pleaching’ itself comes from the Latin ‘plectare’ meaning to plait, referring to the way the horizontal branches are joined together.  The example we spotted is being trained with a method that we’ve heard referred to as ‘string pleaching’.  The other form that is commonly seen requires less detailed attention and is basically a hedge on stilts and can be maintained with a simple trim once or twice a year.  Both offer structure to a garden and are especially useful to add further privacy above an existing wall or fence.  Magnolia grandiflora, hornbeam, lime, Quercus ilex, and crab apples are all suitable subjects for pleaching. For us it’s a  fine example of the craft-gardener’s art - the sort of skill and practice that is lovely to see.