The following feature advisor article has been written by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species NB Articles are written independently of the Wight Rural Hub
Hedgerow wildlife. Hedgerows are often called the nation’s largest nature reserve, and with good reason. Their current length, 400,000km just in England, make them long enough to wrap around the world nearly ten times.
Yet despite the impressive extent of the network, their land footprint is remarkably modest given what they offer. For wildlife, hedges provide home, food, shelter and connectivity, enough that a single hedge has been shown to support over 2,070 different species! The complexity created by their mix of shrubs, trees, tussocky margins (and sometimes banks and ditches) create a “woodland edge” type mini mosaic habitat, to which a huge array of wildlife are well adapted. Animals like dormice, hedgehogs, bats and birds may all thrive in a landscape rich in well managed hedges.
Hedgerows benefit farms. But let’s be clear; wildlife was not the reason hedges were established. We’ve had hedgerows since the Bronze Age, managing and maintaining many ancient hedges for thousands of years, primarily for all the benefits they bring to farming. Stock control is the most obvious but not only benefit farming has enjoyed. Shade, shelter, biosecurity and diverse browse from hedges contributes to the high welfare and quality our livestock farming can take pride in. Hedges also play a part in pest control by supporting natural predators, pollination services through feeding and providing hibernation and nesting opportunities to our native pollinators, soil protection from wind and water erosion as well as other less measurable benefits like privacy, wood fuel, food and farming heritage.
Can hedgerows save the world? Now we are looking to hedges to help with some of our wider societal issues; climate change and biodiversity loss. Recent research shows that hedges can store more carbon per hectare than forest, largely due to the sheer quantities they accumulate underground and in the soil. Ironically, this is probably the reason we haven’t recognised their carbon storage potential sooner.
And it’s largely for these reasons that the Government have made big commitments to the nations’ hedges, aiming for 45,000 miles planted and restored by 2050. Luckily for us, these government targets will have wider befits, especially if we’re strategic about what we plant, where we plant and how we manage these new hedges.
How are we doing? Currently a lot of the potential benefits from hedges remain untapped. With the demise of hedgelaying as a standard (periodic) practice after the war, our hedgerows have been declining. Rejuvenation through hedgelaying or coppicing gives another lifecycle to a hedge; in the long term it’s the only thing that keeps any hedge alive. From the cuts made at the base of each stem come multiple new shoots. These shoots are the next generation of hedge and thicken a hedge from the base up.
Our hedges, layed once per generation for thousands of years, have now seen 70 odd years since this practice was commonplace. Hedges are tough, robust and resilient but even with fantastic routine management, they’ll decline over time without the essential rejuvenation step. It’s now been so long, that these structural declines are threatening widespread hedge loss.
Despite huge efforts to plant new hedgerows in recent years, overall hedge length hasn’t increased. We’re losing mature, often ancient, hedgerows just as fast as we’re planting new ones. And that’s a serious problem — these older hedges store more carbon and support far richer wildlife than newly planted ones can, at least for many decades.
But this trajectory was pretty much inevitable given the context; since farming lost most of its labour after the war, hedge laying has become something many farms no longer had the time to do in-house as was the norm pre-war, nor the finances to hire hedgelayers. It’s only recently that government grants have been financially adequate and widely accessible to get this practice back on track. So now we need to take them up on these!
PTES’ Healthy Hedgerows app is a free rapid assessment tool designed for farmers, to advise what management best benefits hedges depending on their current condition and life stage. With over 50,000 hedges surveyed to date, it is helping farmers get their hedge management back on track with bespoke hedge management advice for each hedge surveyed.
Making the most of the grants. Capital grants, when available are a great way to get back into the essential practice of hedge rejuvenation. They can cover laying, coppicing, gapping up and planting, all essential to restoring the incredible network of hedges we’re increasingly relying on.
When the return of the capital grants was announced (after a winters pause), they returned with a £35k financial cap per year. Luckily, when it comes to hedge rejuvenation, staggering the work over several years is both the most ecologically and practical way forward.
A farm scale hedge management plan (guidance available here) helps you spread any ecologically or financially intensive work, plan/maximise grant applications to cover this work and manage any external resourcing it might require, such as hedgelaying contractors. Plans make it easier to manage hedgerows with a lifecycle approach; not only securing their future but creating a diversity of hedge structures across your farm to help wildlife thrive.
Whilst we aren’t aiming to replicate the past when planting new hedges, it is often helpful to understand what has changed. This website shows you old maps alongside current aerial photos to see where hedges and hedgerow trees have changed.
Hedgerow trees – A side effect of stopping laying was the lack of new hedgerow tree recruitment, as suitable stems were often left during a hedge lay, to grow up as hedgerow standard trees. The loss of hedge trees to the war effort, to disease, removal and age has meant we are currently understocked, not recruiting enough even to cover our losses.
Hedgerow trees provide the carbon, and wildlife benefits we need of them, without taking land out of food production. They improve the hedge as a habitat, and when well-placed can enhance some of the other farm benefits too. See our hedgerow tree resources for inspiration on both how, and where to establish new hedge trees to maximise their impact.
Architects of the future landscape – When designing new hedgerows, we get to be architects of a future landscape. We get to decide what the main purposes of these hedgerows will be. With wildlife in mind, a good mixture of shrub and tree species is a great idea. Connecting up existing habitat, filling in gaps and diversifying the landscape will all help your new hedge add maximum value. Any hedge connecting woodland patches can have more trees to help connect the woodland species. A hedge in a more open landscape may want to be kept shorter, providing essential cover at the base. It’s hard to design a hedge that won’t add some sort of habitat value, but putting in a bit of time to work out your priorities will pay dividends for wildlife.
What you’ll notice from looking at old hedges in winter is there’s almost always signs of past management. It might be an awkward elbow shaped bit of wood at the bottom; an old pleacher showing where it’d been laid in years gone by. Or it might be a multi-stemmed tree showing signs of past coppicing. We need to take notice of these signs, return our hedges to management which includes periodic rejuvenation such as hedgelaying or coppicing as well as routine maintenance if we are to stand a chance of keeping our hedges in the long term, let our hedgerows reach their full potential and reap the full benefits they can bring.
Useful hedgerow resources:
This article was written by megan.gimber@ptes.org
