To treat each side of a garden walk, or alley, with pleaching and thus make a secluded walk was a favourite device of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Although most pleaching is done by gardeners, it can also occur naturally.
pic.twitter.com/ESS8NBF9sR Hope eventually got some from the the House of Commons, which explained the person pictured was in fact simply a gardener "pleaching" the trees.
Pleaching is usually done to hedges and branches covering walkways and must have been a pretty gruelling task on this scale, the garden having over 60 trees.
"I'm not choosing historical plants — the basis of Le Nôtre's gardens was hornbeams, and in the field bosquets a mixture of European trees, such as limes and some field maples, which, like the hornbeams, were pleached.
In his tightly pleached arguments, he's making room for the reader, and a fresh inquiry.
Multi-stemmed shrubs provide heights without hindering views, pleached trees create privacy without stealing garden space and topiary provides structure to a flowery planting scheme.
For example, the walled garden, which was laid out in 2000 by Tom Stuart-Smith, contains beech tunnels, topiary yews and pleached lime squares.
A pressing question lies at the heart of this exploration of pottery-making, yarn-spinning, hedge-pleaching, roof-thatching, plowing with oxen, and other traditional crafts: Was it wise of us to abandon skills honed over millennia?
