Our hedgelaying courses are held during the autumn and winter months of the year. We aim to run one course each month between September and February with March reserved for our annual "Skills of the Hills" hedgelaying competition.

The hedges we use for the course normally belong to landowners around the village of Yarcombe in East Devon. The meeting point is usually either Yarcombe or Stockland Village Hall but we will contact you with all the location details and exact timings in the week prior to the course. Very occasionally we stray farther north into the heart of the Blackdown Hills but we will post here if a course is going to be held off our normal patch.

The course starts at roughly 9am and will finish at about 4pm although light levels tend to dictate the stop time in the midwinter months.

We can provide all the tools you will need during the day or you are welcome to bring your own. Billhook, loppers, pruning saw etc. Most vital is a decent pair of gardening gloves. We will most likely be dealing with brambles and laying hawthorn and blackthorn. Your gloves need to be able to stand up to manhandling their thorny stems.

Please note that we don't expect you to bring a chainsaw. From a safety point of view, it is best that the use of chainsaws is restricted to the instructors. Also there is a modern trend for battery operated pruning saws using a chain to cut – please leave these at home. They are a significant safety risk and may not be used either on our training courses or hedgelaying competitions.

On the day, we break at lunchtime so you will need to bring something to eat and plenty to drink as it can be thirsty work. We also stop for a mid-morning break so bring a Thermos for that as well if you like.

Note that the weather plays a great part in scheduling these courses. If it is too wet then we postpone the course for safety reasons. If this happens we try to reschedule the course for the following Saturday if possible. It is important to supply a telephone number so we can contact you at short notice if this needs to happen.

One last thing, do please bear in mind that the courses are held in the Devon countryside and civilised toilet facilities are not usually available!