Pleached Trees

Pleach ... to plait or intertwine, as of the stems and boughs of trees, to make an alley …

Today, the word ‘pleach’ describes a tree whose branches have been trained onto a flat frame, rather like a free-standing trellis. Its origins are uncertain: there’s the Latin word for ‘weaving’ or ‘plaiting’ (plectere), but also the Old French plaissier, meaning ‘to make a hedge’. This mixture of decorative and practical function is completely apt. Pleached trees are both. Their first burst of popularity in English gardens coincided with changing ideas about gardens and private spaces. As the fashion grew for knot gardens, with their intricate patterns and enclosed walkways, pleaching was essential. Homes at this time - even grand manor houses - were seldom private spaces. As the historian Rachel Moss observes, the letters of well-to-do men and women in this period make reference to gardens and orchards as places where one might have a sensitive or confidential conversation, with less chance of being overheard, as one might be in the house.

Gardeners making an arbour with interlaced trees. Thomas Hill, The Gardener’s Labyrinth (1577)

Unlike a thick evergreen hedge or a mature tree, pleached trees afford privacy, but in a much lighter, airier way. With up to six feet of bare stem, they can easily be underplanted, and mark a boundary while taking up the minimum space. The interwoven branches filter light rather than blocking it. Those early pleached walks were the beginnings of gardens as outdoor rooms, as we often see them today. Today, we often use evergreens for pleaching. Hollies, especially the elegant Ilex x koehniana castaneifolia, the chestnut-leafed holly, work well; so does the rich green Prunus lusitanica. But we also stock pleached hornbeam or beech (carpinus betulus or fagus sylvatica), which hang onto their leaves through winter. Flowering shrubs, such as ceanothus or the beautiful deep pink loropetalum, likewise lend themselves to training onto a frame. We stock them as espaliers - pyracantha and ceanothus are trained here in the nursery.

There is something about the way pleached trees play with space - providing instant height with only the lightest substance - that introduces an element of drama into even a small garden. Like the ‘thick-pleached alley’ of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, where romantic conspiracies and teasing conversations whisper amongst the twisted boughs, an enclosed garden invites us in, beckoning, embracing.

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Vertigrow Plant Nurseries, Lawnswood House, Malton Road, York, YO32 9TL