Suburban Deadhedge

Hey all,

Longtime lurker, first time poster.

I wanted to share the current state of my 'Deadhedge' project. It is the dead of winter, and cold as anything here in Eastern Canada. This is the time of year I try to do most of my tree trimming and pollarding around the property, and am always left with massive brush piles. The first few years of this task I had fantastically huge bonfires with the trimmings. That grew old and smokey and wanted to find some actual use for the leftovers. I figured I would start piling this brush up along the entire perimeter of the property. This was awesome! I still do this a bit depending on how close I am to a pile, and I love the feeling of seeing this wall around the whole property. Rabbits and other small critters love it too.
Skip ahead a few years. Started a small garden on a 'road facing' section of my property. This was great! Though every time I looked out at my 'beautiful' garden, all I could focus on was the street. This needed to be erased. Enter the brushpile wall. Wait those are pretty unsightly... are you sure you want this on the front of your house in suburbia. Bound to get a complaint.    Enter, THE DEADHEDGE!

Pretty simple to put together. The posts are a combination of living trees, and posts I made while trimming trees.
The 'filler' are hundreds of stack of tree limbs. All stacked in one direction, and layed between the posts in a brick stacking way.
And just like that the road is gone!
I plan to plant lots of growies around it once it warms up, maybe incorporate some vines along the garden side, and will continue to 'top it up' as it shrinks.

Anyways, maybe someone will find it interesting! No complaints from the neighbours yet.

Welcome to Permies!

Welcome to Permies and thanks for presenting your project!
You are absolutely doing the right thing, burning that wood would be a shame.

I am sure you know what a valuable habitat such a hedge is. Here in Germany I get birds like robins and wrens, European hedgehogs, probably newts, shrews (they eat lots of small critters and slug eggs) and all sorts of beneficial insects and solitary bees, plus it provides shelter for overwintering butterflies and so much more! Once the wood starts decaying on the ground level, even more insects will benefit.

So congratulations on such a solution!

My garden is much smaller so I only have a small pile of dead wood, but still it is valuable. In fact I entered my garden into a competition for natural, sustainable gardens and one of the compulsory elements is a pile or hedge of dead wood/brushes.

Thanks for the lovely response! Yes the wildlife created by these piles has been remarkable.

While initially constructed as mainly a privacy screen, such a simple structure is proving many more beneficial uses.

A few other notable benefits I’ve also experienced include being a windbreak, deters deer (the lazy ones at least), offers a sense of perimeter security, and eventually a great trellis structure.