H is for hedges
‘WITHOUT HEDGES England would not be England. Hedges, thick and high, and full of flowers, birds, and living creatures, of shade and flecks of sunshine dancing up and down the bark of the trees – I love their very thorns. You do not know how much there is in the hedges,’ wrote nature writer Richard Jefferies. Like linear forests, there are more than 300,000 miles of hedgerow in England alone, and they form a bigger nature reserve than all the official nature reserves in Britain combined. Thousands of those miles were laid during the Enclosures of the 18th century, but some hedges date back a millennium or more – a meandering line is often a clue to antiquity – and a few are strips of the original wildwood that once carpeted Britain.
From afar, hedges form an appealing lattice across the countryside; up close they brim with interest. Trees like hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and holly form the scaffolding, through which briars, blackberries and honeysuckle climb, while wildflowers like red campions and bluebells dot the base with blooms. Sparrows and yellowhammers nest in the tangled depths, where rare bats and dormice shelter too, while bees and butterflies browse for nectar.
After a dismal period when farmers were paid to grub up hedges, they’re now recognised as vital highways for wildlife, and it’s hard to think of a walk where you won’t bump into one. If you want to estimate its age you need Hooper’s Rule – count the tree species in a 100-foot stretch and that’s how many centuries old the hedge is. And if you’re looking for exceptional examples try these two. The Meikleour beech hedge near Blairgowrie was planted in 1745, by men who died fighting in the Jacobite Rebellion soon after. The trees were left to grow as a memorial and it is now one third of a mile long and 100 feet tall – the highest hedge in the world according to The Guinness Book of Records. And at Powis Castle near Welshpool, the National Trust has to take to ‘extreme gardening’ to trim its 45-foot yew hedges, shaping them into a line of gorgeous lumpy-bumpy tumps.