The secret safari inside our hedges
WHAT hums with bees and butterflies, is a haven for insects, birds, hedgehogs, shrews, voles and bats, and also acts as a windbreak, stock fence, flood defence system and barrier against soil erosion?
The answer is the humble and often-neglected British hedge, which author Christopher Hart describes as ‘an incredibly precious and self-sustaining feature of our countryside … one of the happiest accidents in human history.’ The rSPB agrees; its research shows that hedges may be supporting up to four-fifths of our woodland birds, half of our wild mammals and a third of our butterflies.
Hedges have been a feature of Britain’s landscape since the Stone Age. The original ones were ‘dead hedges’, made from piles of branches and brushwood collected from cleared areas of woodland.
As the wood rotted, it was swiftly colonised by fungi and insects; seeds from trees and shrubs such as hazel, oak, ash, hawthorn, dog rose, blackthorn and bramble were excreted by passing birds and soon started sprouting in among the dead wood. And lo, a living hedge was born. (A hedgerow, if you were wondering, is a hedge that includes features such as banks, trees, walls, fences or gates.)
Our ancestors soon learned the best way to deal with an unruly hedge was to cut half way through a rising trunk then lay it back into the hedge sideways. In time, this creates a barrier so dense and tough that it can even hold back an amorous bull trying to get into a field of cows.
Yet as Hart points out, these ancient hedges are so much more than just a physical barrier. They mitigate flooding and soil erosion and give many animals an invaluable source of shelter from wind and rain. A hedge will protect smaller birds and mammals from predators like crows, magpies, sparrowhawks and foxes, which can’t get into a dense hedge. This ‘narrow but incredibly complex ecosystem’ is also an abundant source of food for wildlife, providing hips, haws, sloes and blackberries for them to feast on.
Many of the countryside hedges we see today pre-date the Georgian era, some even being Anglo-Saxon. In a county like Devon, where the land is suited to sheep and cattle and less likely to be ploughed, at least a quarter of the hedges date back to Norman times.
THere are strong regional variations in Britain’s hedges. In the Midlands, traditionally cattle country, hedges tend to be mainly hawthorn, which is an excellent barrier to bullocks. The high rainfall in Wales and Ireland is just the thing for blackthorn, which happens to be a handy plant for snagging and restraining sheep.
The Somerset Levels typically have hedges made of osier, a small willow tree, while in Kent and Worcestershire you’ll find hedges of beech, poplar and elder, which grow tall to protect prized orchards from the wind.
By 1820 there were 700,000 kilometres of hedges in england (and many more in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.) Today the figure is 400,000, which still sounds impressive, but many of these hedges are so degraded that they have become ‘little more than a blunt, dwarfish line of scarred and wind- scoured stumps’, as Hart writes despairingly.
On arable land, hedges are often seen as an obstacle for tractors, while on pastureland, farmers find it easier to put up a barbed wire fence than have a hedge separating livestock. Hart is sympathetic to farmers, who are not ‘the cartoonish villains of the countryside but, rather, hard-pressed food producers just trying to stay in business’.
But there’s no denying that replacing a bountiful hedge with barbed wire is a disaster for wildlife, resulting in ‘no wild foods, berries, nuts, wild greens or herbs … no shelter or habitat for birds and mammals, beneficial pollinators and insect predators.’
MOST of the damage to the country’s hedges was done from the 1960s onwards when, incredibly, government actually offered subsidies for their removal. After 1973, the eU’s catastrophic Common Agricultural Policy was even more zealous in paying farmers to destroy ancient hedges.
If all this sounds depressing to anyone who cares about the countryside and its wildlife, Hart offers some practical solutions. Many hedges in private gardens are a single variety, like privet or beech; why not rewild yours, he suggests, by weaving honeysuckle and brambles through your hedge, thus making it far more attractive to insects?
And if you leave a little verge around the bottom of your hedge, all sorts of wild flowers might pop up, from orchids and buttercups to cow parsley and bluebells.
Above all, Hart urges us to cherish our existing hedges. Instead of spending a fortune on planting millions of new trees, which he says are ‘of low ecological value’, he would like the Government to allocate a fraction of that money to restoring hedgerows.
With better management of hedges, ‘ we might not need to worry so much about insects disappearing, bird numbers falling or our targets for carbon capture. Our lovely native hedgerows would do much of the work for us, if we only look after them.’
Hart has his own 300 yards of ‘beautiful, unkempt, pullulating hedgerow’ at his home in Wiltshire, and he has seen for himself how endangered birds such as redwings and fieldfares will eagerly flock to a hedge which provides nutritious wild berries for them.
He has written an eye- opening and inspiring book which will leave you with a deep appreciation of these wonderful habitats — and perhaps a desire to create your very own hedge. Hart says: ‘ You don’t need to go to the Serengeti to see amazing animals. You just need a good thick hedge.’