pleacher

With each new pleacher I laid and wove, I was building more tension into the structure and increasing its stability.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Removing some of the side branches makes it possible to weave the pleacher in and out of the stakes you drive in every eighteen inches or two feet.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

There is something practical about the way ash goes about healing itself: the way the bark curls over the starburst of radial cracks in a half-severed stem at the heel of a pleacher, just like a human scar.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Cutting with an upward stroke of the billhook, going with the grain, is far easier than cutting downwards, as you have to at the base of the pleacher.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

With each new pleacher I laid and wove, I was building more tension into the structure and increasing its stability.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Removing some of the side branches makes it possible to weave the pleacher in and out of the stakes you drive in every eighteen inches or two feet.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

There is something practical about the way ash goes about healing itself: the way the bark curls over the starburst of radial cracks in a half-severed stem at the heel of a pleacher, just like a human scar.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Cutting with an upward stroke of the billhook, going with the grain, is far easier than cutting downwards, as you have to at the base of the pleacher.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009