Sure can, Ginda.
“Laying a hedge” refers to partially cutting the stems of the trees and shrubs that make up the hedge so that they can be “laid over” into a fence. The laid stems then begin to grow in the new direction, in addition to sending up fresh sprouts from the cut portion to further fill in the hedge. There are quite a number of regional styles in Britain that differ in angles, staking, and the braiding of usually hazel rods across the top. This is a freshly laid hedge.
This is another example, again, pretty recently laid:
A hedge like this has to be regularly trimmed, and will need to be relaid to fill in gaps every 25-50 years. Some hedges in Britain are thought to be hundreds of years old.
This is a coppice hedge. It’s trees were cut off and encourage to regrow into shapes that would fill in the space between them, instead of laying to one side.
Coppice hedges tend to be more prone to holes low in the hedge than laid hedges.
This is a laid hedge with “standards” - full trees left in place every so often. This is sort of what I’m going for.
Those standards are pretty young, so they’ll either be let grow as full trees, or pruned further into pollards later.
Now, sometimes when a hedge has been neglected, there are trees in it too big to lay, and for whatever reason undesired as standards. So they’re cut off. And it wouldn’t surprise me if this one sent up fresh sprouts to help fill in, that will be laid into the hedge in the future. In fact, that might have started as an attempt to lay that one and it just broke off, but it’ll be ok.
If you really want the full rabbit hole, I do have a pile of research. Much of Britain’s original woodland was managed as coppice woodland. Quite a bit more as pollard forests. Unfortunately, much of the knowledge of how to do that (And why!) has been lost. However, I can recommend a book or two and some articles if you are interested.
Youtube has some videos, too, if you want to watch hedgelayers at work: