Ontario Tree Spading
Midland, Ontario L4R 1L8
905-510-7159 | phone
Hours of Operation
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Pleaching: The art of training trees
Once the preserve of grand estates, pleaching – the art of training trees into
stunning shapes – has become a modern style statement.
Sooner or later all gardeners realise that there is nothing new under the sun.
Every trendy planting style, technique and design element is just a
reinterpretation of what has gone before. The 26th National Tree Week
(www.tree council.org.uk) starts today, and it is a good opportunity to
think about how to make old arboreal techniques sing in a contemporary
setting.
The use of pleached trees to establish the architecture of a garden is one of
the defining aspects of 17th and 18th-century design, particularly in France
and Italy. Traditionally used to demarcate grand allées or to enclose
intimate spaces, pleached trees had, until recently, fallen out of
widespread use. Now, following their appearance in Chelsea Flower Show
gardens, often in the form of “hedges on stilts,” enthusiasm for pleached
trees is filtering across the country. Related forms of manipulation are
also popular – tree “ceilings” and tunnels, for example, can be seen for
sale in large garden centres.
Pleaching is a style of growing trees in a line, usually straight, with the
branches of the tree tied together and clipped to form a flat plane above
the bare trunk. The branches are tied onto canes or wire to make tiers, and
are then regularly pruned to keep their shape.Sometimes they naturally graft
themselves onto one another.
Planting a pleached hedge has been made much easier in recent years by the
availability of ready-pleached trees. Imported mainly from Italy, these are
trees whose branches have already started to be trained and are tied to a
bamboo frame. Even in this immature state they have an instant and dramatic
impact in a garden but, before planting them, it is essential to imagine
what they will be like in five, 10 and 20 years’ time. Leave lots of space
for them to grow.
An imposing row of neatly clipped trees looks beautiful, but demands work.
Head gardener David Martin looks after dozens of pleached trees at the
Jardins du Bâtiment in Thiré, France (the country where you will find the
best examples of the technique). He estimates that a team of three expert
gardeners will spend a whole week, twice a year, maintaining a run of 50
trees.
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