If you don’t want to spend an afternoon hauling those fallen branches and scrap trees to the transfer station, you can easily turn them into a free, sturdy fence.
Called “dead hedges,” these simple structures date back to the Bronze Age, when they were built by hunter-gatherers. People once commonly made them in Maine, and some still do today.
Although they’re more common in Europe and the United Kingdom now, dead hedges are finding popularity with environmentally minded gardeners in Maine for good reason: they’re simple, free and low-maintenance methods to build a fence, compost wood waste and provide habitat for wildlife.
Dead hedges are also unique, artistic landscaping features or privacy screens.
They are an older relative to traditional English hedgerows, which weave living plants into fence patterns, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The idea is also related to hugelkultur mounds, a permaculture method that uses trees and branches to create rich, composted garden beds.
Early farmers in the Northeast made them too: the 1790 book “The New-England Farmer” says that living hedgerows look handsomer, but for a good dead hedge, “Take stakes about six feet long, and set them fast in the ground, upon the line of your fence, about four feet apart, or a less distance if your bushes be short. Then interweave bushes, young trees, or small slender limbs of trees. This fence will answer with a yearly repairing till the stakes fail.”
Today, people set up their dead hedges by driving two rows of stakes or thicker branches with sharpened ends about a foot into the ground, spaced two or three feet apart. For a basic hedge, leave a foot or two between the rows. Most are about two or three feet high; any taller, and the supporting stakes have a lot of weight to carry.
Fill the space between the stakes with branches, brush and extra yard waste. Compact it down a bit. If you have any thin, flexible branches or green saplings, you can weave them between the stakes for a finished look and some structure.
Make sure the fence stakes holding the hedge together are strong and well-supported, said Rebecca Long, a horticulture training specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
Long built a dead hedge in her yard last year. She wanted a way to use sticks and brush on her property and get the benefits of using organic matter while cleaning up.
Long started with bigger branches on the outside of the hedge, then smaller sticks and leaves in the middle. It’s been working great so far, she said, providing a home for chipmunks and a mating stage for birds.
You can add new yard waste to it every season as the layers settle and decompose.
Some people even plant trees into the rows once they’ve aged and built up soil, or grow climbing vines along the sides. Vines native to Maine include the edible wild grape, wild cucumber and groundnut, plus Virginia creeper and wild clematis.
If providing critter habitat is not on your agenda, you can try building these farther away from your house or garden. Also, build away from other flammable materials to reduce fire risk.
