hedge cutting and the uses of twigs

Today was a beautiful day for working outside.  The sun shone, it wasn't raining or windy.  Perfect weather, in fact, for getting things done that require a chainsaw.  We took the top out of some field maples, Acer campestre, that were outgrowing their space in the boundary hedge between us and the neighbouring farm.  Field maple is a beautiful plant, the leaves turning a vivid butter yellow in the autumn, but it is vigorous, wanting to make a medium sized tree if left to its own devices.  The birds will be starting to think about nest sites before too long, so any hedge cutting needs to be done fairly soon.

The larger branches will be seasoned over the summer and used as firewood next winter.  The smaller bits went through the shredder and will be used to mulch the paths around the compost bins.  An apparently huge pile of twigs makes a very small amount of wood chippings, so we never have enough.  As I shredded I thought how nowadays woody prunings are generally treated as waste, to be disposed of somehow, crammed into the family car and taken to the tip, or burnt on the bonfire, or most annoyingly dumped in farm gates and lay-bys (indeed, some wretched person has been dumping pyracantha prunings and even a piece of disgarded box topiary in the entrance to our spinney).  In the past the twigs of at least some native species were useful.  I was reading a gardening encyclopedia written in the middle of the last century by the wonderful Arthur Hellyer, and he describes building land drains by digging a trench (1 in 40 slope sufficient) and filling the bottom of it with bundles of hazel twigs, which will carry the water away after the trench is backfilled.  It will, he says, last for many years, provided that a sufficient quantity of twigs is used.  He does not elaborate on how many is sufficient.  Indeed, in wet areas great medieval cathedrals such as Ely were built on rafts of twigs, and Brunel used the same method for his railways.  Alder was often used, because it resists rot when wet, or hazel was pretty good.