Pleaches and Liggers
Rowan Atkinson could write a whole comedy sketch around those two words.
The pleach is the semi-cut part of the stem that allows the branch to bend and lay. It is important to get the correct depth to the cut, You have to thin it out enough to allow the stem to lay, but you have to leave enough wood to allow sap to draw up through the stem to keep the tree alive and to encourage new growth.
The laid stems (‘liggers’ to us in the trade) will give good thickness in the bottom of the hedge, but also sprout new upward branches in a very short space of time.
You would think that the liggers are the most important part of a layed hedge. Not so, the coppice stool left on the original tree, from which the ligger ligs, is the most important bit. It is essential that new strong stems spring from the coppice stump, because when the hedge is next laid, all the old liggers will be cut out, and the process re-started from the original tree. In that way we always work with the youngest, strongest stems, regenerating the plants and allowing continuity of growth way beyond the trees natural age.