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The branchage: Keeping the Island in trims
Modern methods and traditional skills help to ensure that Jersey's hedges are kept in place
THE Jersey countryside is short on the sort of large-scale scenery you will find in, say, the Scottish Highlands or the Australian outback.
It does, however, have great charm on a small scale, and among its outstanding glories are its roadside banks and hedgerows.
In spring and summer these are bright with three or four shades of red campion, the massive umbels of cow parsley and countless other more modest wildflowers.
Sadly, because they are part of the backdrop of everyday life, it is all to easy to miss these priceless attractions.
It is also all too easy to imagine that banks and hedges are the stuff of the natural world. They are not. They are as much the creations of man as our granite walls. That said, they were formed with the complicity of nature, which found the new environment congenial for many of its species.
Town dwellers, meanwhile, might not be fully aware that without careful attention, the Island's roadside banks and the hedges which top so many of them would soon decline into chaos.
This is where an ancient Island tradition, the branchage, enters the picture.
At its best, this twice-yearly operation involves the careful trimming back of luxuriant late spring and summertime growth to leave roadside margins looking smooth and manicured.
As well as preventing foliage from spilling over into public thoroughfares, the branchage makes junctions safer by clearing the view of drivers pausing at yellow lines or turning off major roads into minor ones.
Temps passˇ - and sometimes in the present - the branchage was carried out with three traditional implements, the sickle, a forked stick cut from the hedgerow itself and a sharpening stone.
Today, petrol-driven strimmers and tractor-mounted flails have taken much of the hard labour from the operation.
It is true to say that these implements are also killing the manual skill of the old branchage, which generally produces a much tidier result.
Tractor flails in particular deal harshly with woody vegetation, ripping off small branches and leaving ugly scars on the bark of larger ones.
Their use may be imperative in a society where time is money, yet they seem strangely at odds with a practice whose origins stretch back to a time when Jersey countryside was utterly untroubled by the noises and smells of mechanised farming.
Although the physical business of the early and late summer hedge cutting has changed dramatically, the philosophy underlying the practice remains much the same. The branchage is a parochial duty and the parishes still ensure that the job is done adequately through visites du branchage, the official inspections during which officials see that no boughs or bushes impinge on highways and byways.
Fines can be levied on landowners who fail in their duty to the parish and their fellow parishioners.
The visite du branchage also has a senior relative, the Visite Royale, during which members of the Royal Court and other officials make their formal examination of a parish.
To the uninitiated, the business of the branchage may look like mere hedge trimming. Islanders, on the other hand, understand that it is at once evidence of social solidarity, part of the life of the countryside and a valued link with Jersey's rich and idiosyncratic past.
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post as part of the Pride in Jersey series, marking the Island's 1204-2004 celebrations.
author - Rob Shipley
This article updated: August 2003
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| ......Daily Ditons...... |
Les fos font les fricots; les sages les mangent.
Fools make feasts; wise men eat them.
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