pleaching

[[Allée of pleached lime trees at Arley Hall|thumb]]

Pleaching or plashing (an early synonym)Oxford English Dictionary was common in gardens from late medieval times to the early eighteenth century, to create shaded paths, or to create a living fence out of trees or shrubs. Commonly deciduous trees were used by planting them in lines. The canopy was pruned into flat planes with the lower branches removed leaving the stems below clear. This craft had been developed by European farmers who used it to make their hedge rows more secure.{{cite book | last = Mentgen | first = Glen A. | title = GROW ON TREES The Complete Guide to Starting Your Own Profitable Tree Farm Includes Production, Maintenance and Marketing. | publisher = TLC Publishing | date = 2000 | location = United States of America. | pages = 120 | isbn = 1-929709-03-X }} Julius Caesar (circa 60 B.C.) states that the Gallic tribe of Nervii used plashing to create defensive barriers against cavalry.

{{cite book

| last = Caesar

| first = Julius

| title = The Gallic Wars

| volume = II

| others = translated by John Warrington

| date = 1955

| location = page 52

| pages = 228

}}

In hedge laying, this technique can be used to improve or renew a quickset hedge to form a thick, impenetrable barrier suitable for enclosing animals. It keeps the lower parts of a hedge thick and dense, and was traditionally done every few years.The booke of husbandry, John Fitzherbert. London, 1573The second book of the English husbandman, Gervase Markham. London, 1614, Part II, ch. VI. Of Plashing of Hedges

The stems of hedging plants are slashed through to the centre or more, then bent over and interwoven. The plants rapidly regrow, forming a dense barrier along its entire length.

In garden design, the same technique has produced elaborate structures,{{Citation |first=Thomas |last=Fischbacher |title=Botanical Engineering |url=http://www.soton.ac.uk/~doctom/talks/botanical-engineering.pdf |year=2007 |publisher=School of Engineering Sciences, University of Southampton |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091222040205/http://www.soton.ac.uk/~doctom/talks/botanical-engineering.pdf |archive-date=2009-12-22 |url-status=dead }} neatly shaded walks and allées. This was not much seen in the American colonies, where a labor-intensive aesthetic has not been a feature of gardening: "Because of the time needed in caring for pleached allées," Donald Wyman noted,Wyman's Gardening Encyclopedia 1971: "Pleach". "they are but infrequently seen in American gardens, but are frequently observed in Europe."

After the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the technique withdrew to the kitchen garden, and the word dropped out of English usage, until Sir Walter Scott reintroduced it for local colour, in The Fortunes of Nigel (1822).The Fortunes of Nigel, ch. x, noted by Paul Roberts, 'Sir Walter Scott's Contributions to the English Vocabulary" PMLA 68.1 (March 1953, pp. 189-210) p 196. After the middle of the nineteenth century, English landowners were once again planting avenues, often shading the sweeping curves of a drive, but sometimes straight allées of pleached limes, as Rowland Egerton's at Arley Hall, Cheshire, which survive in splendidly controlled form.Charles Foster, "The History of the Gardens at Arley Hall, Cheshire" Garden History 24.2 (Winter 1996), pp. 255-271. p 265 and 266:fig 10.

In Much Ado About Nothing, Antonio reports (I.ii.8ff) that the Prince and Count Claudio were "walking in a thick pleached alley in my orchard." A modern version of such free-standing pleached fruit trees is sometimes called a "Belgian fence": young fruit trees pruned to four or six wide Y-shaped crotches, in the candelabra-form espalier called a palmette verrier, are planted at close intervals, about two metres apart, and their branches are bound together to makes a diagonal lattice,Eleanor Perenyi, Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden (New York) 1981 pp 24-25. a regimen of severe seasonal pruning; lashing of young growth to straight sticks and binding the joints repeat the pattern.

Smooth-barked trees such as limewood or linden trees, or hornbeams were most often used in pleaching. A sunken parterre surrounded on three sides by pleached allées of laburnum is a feature of the Queen's Garden, Kew, laid out in 1969 to complement the seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch architecture of Kew Palace.Quarterly Newsletter (Garden History Society) No. 10 (Summer 1969), pp. 8-10. A pleached hornbeam hedge about three meters high is a feature of the replanted town garden at Rubens House, Antwerp, recreated from Rubens' painting The Walk in the Garden and from seventeenth-century engravings.Anne Kendal, "The Garden of Rubens House, Antwerp"Garden History 5.2 (Summer 1977, pp 27-29), p.28.

In the gardens of André Le Nôtre and his followers, pleaching kept the vistas of straight rides through woodland cleanly bordered. At Studley Royal, Yorkshire, the avenues began to be pleached once again, as an experiment in restoration, in 1972.Ken Lemmon, "Restoration Work at Studley Royal" Garden History 1.1 (September 1972, pp. 22-23) p. 22.

The word pleach has been used to describe the art form of tree shapingArticle Title: Art Eco, Photographer Deborah Johansen California Living, SF Sun. Examiner and Chronicle 14 Nov 1980 or one of the techniques of tree shaping.Article Title: The Tree Circus, Writer: Fredric Hobbs, San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle, 23 Nov 1980{{Citation| last = McKee| first = Kate| magazine = Sustainable and water wise gardens| title = Living sculpture| place = Westview| publisher = Universal Wellbeing PTY Limited| year = 2012| pages = 70–73}} Pleaching describes the weaving of branches into houses, furniture, ladders and many other 3D art forms. Examples of living pleached structures include Richard Reames's red alder bench and Axel Erlandson's sycamore tower. There are also conceptual ideas like the Fab Tree Hab.Article Title: Nature's Home, [https://books.google.com/books?id=GSmYhbCAjFQC&pg=PT43&dq=pleach+%22axel+erlandson%22&hl=en&ei=AKQhTojpJq2OmQWxz8WhAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=pleached&f=false|google books], Princeton Architectural Press, July 2005

• Topiary
• Espalier
• Quincunx, "a pattern used for planting trees"
• Tree shaping

{{reflist|2}}

• Time-Life Encyclopedia of Gardening: Pruning and Grafting

{{Wiktionary}}

• [http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/good_wood/pleachng.htm PLEACHING by Mark Primack From The NSW Good Wood Guide]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20150605013110/http://www.archinode.com/bienal.html House made by Pleaching: Fab Tree Hab]

Category:Garden features

Category:Tree shaping