A call to restore Britain’s “luxuriant, linear thickets” of biodiversity

Many distinguished authors have extolled the traditional English hedgerow, from Max Hooper and Oliver Rackham to John Wright and Richard Mabey. Now the novelist, Christopher Hart, makes an original contribution to the canon with a plea for this “reservoir of wildlife”. A call to restore Britain’s hedges to the benefit of biodiversity, wildlife habitat and climate, his new book is eloquent and elegiac, if not without optimism.

A story of neglect

England is thought to have lost over half its hedges between the 1940s and 1990s; since then, replanting and restoration have lifted the total to the present estimate of some 400,000 kilometres, though half may now be mere lines of stumpy growth, flailed yearly but otherwise neglected.

A ‘gappy, stunted’ hedge that should be left to grow before being relaid, or coppiced to the ground.

Hart calls for an army of volunteer hedge-layers to work with farmers to revive this precious natural heritage. He compares the cost of annual tractor flailing, in terms of diesel fuel and CO2 output, with a once-every-10-years hedge-laying cycle.

He also points out that the barbed wire fences needed to stock-proof “gappy, stunted” hedges have none of the virtues of a traditional hedge: they do not provide food, protection or “corridors” for birds, mammals, insects and fungi; they do not stabilise the soil or increase its carbon storage; they do not prevent erosion, absorb ground moisture or act as windbreaks (reducing transpiration). Barbed wire is CO2-intensive and difficult to recycle, while its wooden support posts, soaked in poisonous wood preservative, need replacing every 10-15 years.

New methods of revival

Hart centres the book around a hedge he has been rewilding in his native Wiltshire – “a mini-Knepp” – using a procedure called “conservation-laying” or “rough-hedge laying”. This approach differs from the traditional hedge-laying method insofar as it requires few or no stakes, no bindings, and leaves little brashwood. Overgrown hedge stems are partially cut at the base (or at 50-70cm) and gently bent over at an angle of about 10°, cutting back bushy growth only as necessary.

An overgrown hedgerow ideal for conservation laying.

Much faster and easier than traditional hedge-laying, this technique creates a thick, tangled mass that provides a perfect haven for nesting birds, mammals and invertebrates, as well as a rich harvest of greens, fruit and nuts. The evidence is that conservation-laying leads to far greater, more rapid recovery in biodiversity than a newly-planted dense-canopy woodland, and is superior even to a laid hedge.

The author touches on another, intriguing new method of hedge restoration used by one farmer in Dorset, who coppices old and degraded hedges to the ground in rotation. Such coppiced hedges regrow with extraordinary vigour, soon ready to be laid as before.

The riches of the hedgerow

Hart describes a conservation hedgerow as “a proxy for the scrubby thickets that dotted our primeval wood-pasture landscape”. Large (historically pollarded) hedgerow trees are the counterpart of similar specimens in the “primordial scrublands”, land once grazed by straight-tusked elephants, giant aurochs and other herbivores.

The most common hedgerow species today are the same as in those thickets: hawthorn and blackthorn, hazel, dogwood and spindle. With time, other species invade, such as briar rose, bramble, crab apple, guelder rose, holly, elder and even large tree species such as oak, ash and willow.

Hart celebrates the rich perennial feast of “free food” from a well-managed hedge, not only for wildlife but also for humans – if only we knew.

A standard managed hedgerow flailed annually that would be much improved by relaying.

Future restoration

As Hart emphasises, we already have the hedges; to restore them would hardly take up any extra land, and would deliver huge gains, not just for wildlife, but for the health of farmland, and at lower long term economic cost than the alternative. He also notes that there are many thousands of kilometres of hedges surrounding parks, lining our streets, in churchyards and schools, which could also be recreated as wildlife havens.

Hedges, he concludes, are Britain’s great, unsung environmental resource. It’s hard to disagree.

Restore with us

Together, we can restore ancient landscapes, and make sure that they will flourish for centuries to come.