What are the financial realities of hedgelaying? The author says hedgelayers work September through March. How do they earn a living during the other half of the year? How do young people learn hedgelaying–are there paid apprenticeships?
Certainly more people should be willing to get their hands dirty, but those manual jobs need to pay a living wage and not just be a labor of love.
Mostly related jobs like landscape gardening or tree surgery.
RM Parker
1 month ago
I remember seeing hedgelayers at work in Warwickshire when I was an undergraduate in the late 1980s – such things were in decline even then, but it was incredible to watch. The skill, the consistency of the finished hedgerows: an artistic transformation of a landscape.
I know it’s too easy to romanticise these things (I spent some time helping a drystone waller in North Yorkshire in my teens and appreciate how much labour goes into traditional skills like this), but it’s leagues ahead of soulless and lifeless wire fencing.
I currently employ eight gardeners/hedgers in my second home(s).
Thanks to a so called Tory Government* allowing Councils to apply a COUNCIL TAX PREMIUM**of 100% thus doubling one’s Council Tax they will HAVE to be dismissed.
The ‘excuse’ for this larceny is that it will increase the availability of homes for locals. This is complete nonsense as none of the ‘peasants’ in my bit of English can possibly afford them!
In fact it is estimated it will raise about £100 million for local councils. That is for some of the most inefficient and slovenly organisations in the country, most of which are on the cusp of bankruptcy, as evidenced by Birmingham’s recent collapse. To subsidise such obvious ‘parasites’ is Communism pure and simple and an utter disgrace to this once great nation of ours.
(* That weirdo otherwise known as Mr Michael Gove.)
(** As from 2025.)
Executing a SMASH & GRAB RAID on the fortunate is NOT the answer.
It an exercise in pure envy and spite and all too redolent of today’s degenerate society, and all this under a so called Tory regime!
No wonder Socrates,Plato and Aristotle thought so little of Democracy. It panders to the basest instincts of the ever needy, greedy Demos, and gives nothing in return.
NB. Should one have the misfortune to own a hovel in Wales the Council Tax Premium could be as high as 300%. Currently in salubrious Pembrokeshire it is 200%.
What do you suppose caused the prices to rise so much?
The same thing that often causes prices to rise – govt interference in a marketplace that officials neither understand nor appreciate.
Yes those damn Commies running social services, road maintenance, libraries etc – let’s get rid of ’em all!
Down in my part of the world – Dumnonia – 2nd homes are a real problem: empty most of the time so not contributing to the local economy (unlike holiday lets) and bidding up the cost of housing.
Hasn’t Dumnonia been savaged by the destruction of both its fishing industry and also its mining? Who was primarily responsible for that?
Was it not Dumnonia, rather like Wales, that demand that none visit the place during the Great Scamdemic?
Put bluntly how does Dumnonia survive outside the Summer months?
Mining in the South-West has largely died out because the easy pickings are long gone and the cost of extraction of what’s left is way more than its cost elsewhere in the world – China Clay mining continues and there are moves to start lithium extraction. The fishing industry is not ‘destroyed’ but has not been helped by generations of Westminster not understanding the issues, with the latest nail in the coffin hammered in by Brexit.
Devon and especially Cornwall do suffer from an economic reliance of seasonal tourism, and one reason is the plethora of second homes empty and unused during those fallow seasons.
Yes, I have an Alpine hovel in Switzerland where the authorities are far more generous and understanding because they are NOT infected by the bacillus of ENVY, unlike our own miserable little government and the odious pygmies who run it.
Are you done yet?
‘Cause I’m here to read about hedges. NOT your finances. As with most real-estate stories, I found yours to be not quite believable. You’re rich beyond measure but you’re gonna let your property fall into wild ruin, and fire eight workers, just to spite the Council?
Maybe instead you should spend your time maintaining your vast holdings yourself and stop monopolizing the Comments.
I thought Negus’ article was quite interesting
I’m NOT “rich beyond measure” but through no fault of my own have inherited various ‘hovels’ and object to having to pay 200% where only a few years ago it was 50%. And to the wretched local council, the worst of the worst where national parasites are concerned.
I dare say you would do the same if you were my position? Or do you perhaps approve of such blatant larceny? Or are you a county councillor perchance?
I agree it is an interesting article and wonder if Negus is related to the late Arthur Negus, a bit of ‘national icon’ as I recall.
Commiserate. Sir Humphrey seems to have hived off everything to your local councils, https://www.gov.uk/understand-how-your-council-works, while encouraging ‘privatisation’ oversight by Big Four auditors etc… Perhaps a mute question who are the parasites? Didn’t a similar company make millions counselling NO.10 on Covid?
Here a project for the ‘agglomeration’ of half a dozen village councils, with all mod cons HQ out in the sticks, drew immediate objections and fortunately the local residents’ petition against saw that HQ squashed at the ballot box.
Direct democracy is not for all but at grass roots level can be recommended. We too have hedge, tree village regulations. Presumably, they too could be subject to a petition…
Dermot O'Sullivan
1 month ago
Three cheers for the hedgelayers!
As an aside, in Ireland the word ditch has a different meaning than that in England. See snippet below (taken from the internet):
We also took old English words and repurposed them for our own use, such as ditch, which in Britain refers to a narrow excavated channel, while in Ireland it means a raised bank. The open drain beside the ditch is known as a sheugh, from the Irish word seoch meaning dike.
Alex Lekas
1 month ago
“farming is the number one threat to the planet” —> perhaps we should try a planet without farming and see if that makes an impression on the George Monbiots of the world. not enough people want to get their hands dirty —> now, we’re onto something. In the US, we have people who earnestly think hunting should be outlawed because meat comes from grocery stores. I’d like to say this is made up, but it’s not.
I’ve just come back from two fantastic weeks in the Carolinas and can give an up-to-the-minute report on the state of US food.
Meat: We went to a chain restaurant for steaks, which our enthusiastic hosts boasted were great… NOT compared to British-reared beef, hung for three weeks. American steaks are as tough as old boots.
Bread: Apart from a few artisan bakers… AVOID THIS SUGARY PAP AT ALL COSTS.
Cheese: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You call THAT cheese???
I’m not sure steak is what you would call a natural part of Carolinas cuisine! Next time, visit a beef area. But I agree with you about bread and cheese; and what about the butter? Weird or what?!
If you were in the Carolinas why ever would they not have taken you to eat BBQ?? Were they natives? Also, there’s nothing as delish as white bread toast slathered with butter and jam. True that about cheese though…
Shrunken Genepool
1 month ago
Plenty of people would be interested in doing it. There is no money to pay for it. The only context in which we could replace the rural labour that disappeared in World War 1, would be conscription and life long national /local service ….a week a year….this could contribute to harvesting, hedge laying, ditch clearing, cooking and cleaning in our hospitals, youth clubs, church restoration, footpath maintenance, styles, ….all sorts of things, whilst at the same time re-building a solidaristic civic-national ‘we identification’ …. We either rebuild our landscape, institutions and national solidarity in tandem, or accept that the loss of hedges is part of the the pattern that we got with consumerism, the sexual revolution, social media, mass-narcissism, hyper-individualism, endless social and geographical mobility, break down of families, the growth of individual households……….
We need to rebuild a culture that could give us Dunkirk….and get rid of the culture that gives us hysterical identity politics and mental illness……Obligations over rights, communitarian rather than cosmopolitan and preferably rooted in natural law.
But in policy terms it starts with conscription and life long service, and pension credits for people who do more than that volunteering in their local communities (and get involved in hedge laying)
If you are not a member already I think you would be a good fit for my party; the SDP .
William Cameron
1 month ago
All over Britain you will see tractors with arms – flails- cutting hedges. They litter the road with thorns which get into your tyre walls requiring new tyres.
The hedges look neat- like a haircut. But in reality the hedge is being destroyed by the flail . But it’s cheap and quick. Lousy for wildlife and bad for the hedge.
John Tyler
1 month ago
I wish my neighbours could grasp the connection between managing their hedge and maintaining their privacy. They constantly say how important it is for hedgehogs and nesting birds yet insist on allowing it to grow increasingly spindly. Of course, this may just be an excuse for sheer laziness, but I fear it is more a case of common-a-garden stupidity and lack of intelligence.
What are the financial realities of hedgelaying? The author says hedgelayers work September through March. How do they earn a living during the other half of the year? How do young people learn hedgelaying–are there paid apprenticeships?
Certainly more people should be willing to get their hands dirty, but those manual jobs need to pay a living wage and not just be a labor of love.
They tend to spend the summer season in Antibes.
Dry stone walling in summer ?
Generally uplands – dry stone walls, lowlands – hedges.
Mostly related jobs like landscape gardening or tree surgery.
I remember seeing hedgelayers at work in Warwickshire when I was an undergraduate in the late 1980s – such things were in decline even then, but it was incredible to watch. The skill, the consistency of the finished hedgerows: an artistic transformation of a landscape.
I know it’s too easy to romanticise these things (I spent some time helping a drystone waller in North Yorkshire in my teens and appreciate how much labour goes into traditional skills like this), but it’s leagues ahead of soulless and lifeless wire fencing.
I am a dry-stone waller
All day I dry-stone wall
Of all appalling callings
Dry-stone walling’s worst of all.
Pam Ayres
I would like to bring your attention to “Potter with her pet mouse Xarifa in 1885.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/obituaries/beatrix-potter-overlooked.html
I currently employ eight gardeners/hedgers in my second home(s).
Thanks to a so called Tory Government* allowing Councils to apply a COUNCIL TAX PREMIUM**of 100% thus doubling one’s Council Tax they will HAVE to be dismissed.
The ‘excuse’ for this larceny is that it will increase the availability of homes for locals. This is complete nonsense as none of the ‘peasants’ in my bit of English can possibly afford them!
In fact it is estimated it will raise about £100 million for local councils. That is for some of the most inefficient and slovenly organisations in the country, most of which are on the cusp of bankruptcy, as evidenced by Birmingham’s recent collapse. To subsidise such obvious ‘parasites’ is Communism pure and simple and an utter disgrace to this once great nation of ours.
(* That weirdo otherwise known as Mr Michael Gove.)
(** As from 2025.)
https://hedgelink.org.uk/guidance/government-funding/
Some schemes apply to landowners and owner-occupiers as well as farmers.
Thank you.
And why can’t the locals afford these houses Charles? What do you suppose caused the prices to rise so much?
Executing a SMASH & GRAB RAID on the fortunate is NOT the answer.
It an exercise in pure envy and spite and all too redolent of today’s degenerate society, and all this under a so called Tory regime!
No wonder Socrates,Plato and Aristotle thought so little of Democracy. It panders to the basest instincts of the ever needy, greedy Demos, and gives nothing in return.
NB. Should one have the misfortune to own a hovel in Wales the Council Tax Premium could be as high as 300%. Currently in salubrious Pembrokeshire it is 200%.
What do you suppose caused the prices to rise so much?
The same thing that often causes prices to rise – govt interference in a marketplace that officials neither understand nor appreciate.
Hmm, so not wealthy folks buying up second, third and fourth homes in idyllic areas then?
Yes those damn Commies running social services, road maintenance, libraries etc – let’s get rid of ’em all!
Down in my part of the world – Dumnonia – 2nd homes are a real problem: empty most of the time so not contributing to the local economy (unlike holiday lets) and bidding up the cost of housing.
An Envy & Spite Tax of 100% is both vindictive and pointless.
When I fire my little cohort of eight who will pick up the bill for their continued sustenance?
Not the wretched Council……heaven forbid!
Hasn’t Dumnonia been savaged by the destruction of both its fishing industry and also its mining? Who was primarily responsible for that?
Was it not Dumnonia, rather like Wales, that demand that none visit the place during the Great Scamdemic?
Put bluntly how does Dumnonia survive outside the Summer months?
Mining in the South-West has largely died out because the easy pickings are long gone and the cost of extraction of what’s left is way more than its cost elsewhere in the world – China Clay mining continues and there are moves to start lithium extraction. The fishing industry is not ‘destroyed’ but has not been helped by generations of Westminster not understanding the issues, with the latest nail in the coffin hammered in by Brexit.
Devon and especially Cornwall do suffer from an economic reliance of seasonal tourism, and one reason is the plethora of second homes empty and unused during those fallow seasons.
Classic.
Perhaps you should ask him how quaint villages survive when much of the population doesn’t live there and what happens to pubs, shops and schools?
“They’ve been ‘dying’ for the past fifty years annd more. And it wasn’t wicked landlords that killed them off.
Ever read ‘Akenfield’ by the late Ronald Blythe? If not, do so, you may enjoy it.
That was more to do with migration to cities, not sure it influenced increases to rural house prices either.
Rural house prices are driven by supply and demand as you very well know.
Petty larceny such as this is not going to improve anything.
Can we take it from this that you’ve “hedged your bets”?
Yes, I have an Alpine hovel in Switzerland where the authorities are far more generous and understanding because they are NOT infected by the bacillus of ENVY, unlike our own miserable little government and the odious pygmies who run it.
Are you done yet?
‘Cause I’m here to read about hedges. NOT your finances. As with most real-estate stories, I found yours to be not quite believable. You’re rich beyond measure but you’re gonna let your property fall into wild ruin, and fire eight workers, just to spite the Council?
Maybe instead you should spend your time maintaining your vast holdings yourself and stop monopolizing the Comments.
I thought Negus’ article was quite interesting
I’m NOT “rich beyond measure” but through no fault of my own have inherited various ‘hovels’ and object to having to pay 200% where only a few years ago it was 50%. And to the wretched local council, the worst of the worst where national parasites are concerned.
I dare say you would do the same if you were my position? Or do you perhaps approve of such blatant larceny? Or are you a county councillor perchance?
I agree it is an interesting article and wonder if Negus is related to the late Arthur Negus, a bit of ‘national icon’ as I recall.
Stop teasing Charles. We all know you live in a bedsit in Folkstone.
If only!
I’m sure you’ve got decades of happy Commenting to go yet, but that hovel of yours could come in handy should you need to visit Dignitas!
Censored for use of the forbidden word: SCOTCH.
A Webley Bull Dog and a bottle of Sc*tch would be preferable.
Commiserate. Sir Humphrey seems to have hived off everything to your local councils, https://www.gov.uk/understand-how-your-council-works, while encouraging ‘privatisation’ oversight by Big Four auditors etc… Perhaps a mute question who are the parasites? Didn’t a similar company make millions counselling NO.10 on Covid?
Here a project for the ‘agglomeration’ of half a dozen village councils, with all mod cons HQ out in the sticks, drew immediate objections and fortunately the local residents’ petition against saw that HQ squashed at the ballot box.
Direct democracy is not for all but at grass roots level can be recommended. We too have hedge, tree village regulations. Presumably, they too could be subject to a petition…
Three cheers for the hedgelayers!
As an aside, in Ireland the word ditch has a different meaning than that in England. See snippet below (taken from the internet):
We also took old English words and repurposed them for our own use, such as ditch, which in Britain refers to a narrow excavated channel, while in Ireland it means a raised bank. The open drain beside the ditch is known as a sheugh, from the Irish word seoch meaning dike.
“farming is the number one threat to the planet” —> perhaps we should try a planet without farming and see if that makes an impression on the George Monbiots of the world.
not enough people want to get their hands dirty —> now, we’re onto something. In the US, we have people who earnestly think hunting should be outlawed because meat comes from grocery stores. I’d like to say this is made up, but it’s not.
I’ve just come back from two fantastic weeks in the Carolinas and can give an up-to-the-minute report on the state of US food.
Meat: We went to a chain restaurant for steaks, which our enthusiastic hosts boasted were great… NOT compared to British-reared beef, hung for three weeks. American steaks are as tough as old boots.
Bread: Apart from a few artisan bakers… AVOID THIS SUGARY PAP AT ALL COSTS.
Cheese: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You call THAT cheese???
I’m not sure steak is what you would call a natural part of Carolinas cuisine! Next time, visit a beef area. But I agree with you about bread and cheese; and what about the butter? Weird or what?!
If you were in the Carolinas why ever would they not have taken you to eat BBQ?? Were they natives? Also, there’s nothing as delish as white bread toast slathered with butter and jam. True that about cheese though…
Plenty of people would be interested in doing it. There is no money to pay for it. The only context in which we could replace the rural labour that disappeared in World War 1, would be conscription and life long national /local service ….a week a year….this could contribute to harvesting, hedge laying, ditch clearing, cooking and cleaning in our hospitals, youth clubs, church restoration, footpath maintenance, styles, ….all sorts of things, whilst at the same time re-building a solidaristic civic-national ‘we identification’ …. We either rebuild our landscape, institutions and national solidarity in tandem, or accept that the loss of hedges is part of the the pattern that we got with consumerism, the sexual revolution, social media, mass-narcissism, hyper-individualism, endless social and geographical mobility, break down of families, the growth of individual households……….
We need to rebuild a culture that could give us Dunkirk….and get rid of the culture that gives us hysterical identity politics and mental illness……Obligations over rights, communitarian rather than cosmopolitan and preferably rooted in natural law.
But in policy terms it starts with conscription and life long service, and pension credits for people who do more than that volunteering in their local communities (and get involved in hedge laying)
If you are not a member already I think you would be a good fit for my party; the SDP .
All over Britain you will see tractors with arms – flails- cutting hedges. They litter the road with thorns which get into your tyre walls requiring new tyres.
The hedges look neat- like a haircut. But in reality the hedge is being destroyed by the flail . But it’s cheap and quick. Lousy for wildlife and bad for the hedge.
I wish my neighbours could grasp the connection between managing their hedge and maintaining their privacy. They constantly say how important it is for hedgehogs and nesting birds yet insist on allowing it to grow increasingly spindly. Of course, this may just be an excuse for sheer laziness, but I fear it is more a case of common-a-garden stupidity and lack of intelligence.
“Common or garden”… unless you can cite an authoritative source.
Thank you for this interesting article. I’m in America and didn’t know any of this.
Lovely article. If only he hadn’t mentioned George Monbiot it would have been perfect!
I’ve had a go at hedge-laying. It’s harder than it looks and a handy skill to have.