The Importance of Hedegrows
This week is national hedgerow week.
If you need a boundary, or some shelter please plant a hedge and this is why:
- They are a home for wildife providing shelter and food.
- The are a transport corridoor for animals trying to get from one habitat to another, even for bats and brirds who follow them so they know where they are going.
- Native hedges are the most widespread semi-natural habitat in the UK, they support a large diversity of flora and fauna.
- They act as a carbon sink.
- They clean the air next to your home.
Choose a hedge work for your garden. It doesn not need to be native. A hedge of roses, laurel or a beech hedge. It’s up to you. Just go green.
Hedge Regeneration
- One hedge row is now a combination of trees and large shrubs. The shrubs, if left, will grow old and die.
- Some where taken to about 10cm above the ground. They should regrow from the base.
- In places we laid over the smaller stems. They will help create a barrier and also produce new shoots.
- Finally we gap filled with native whips (twigs with roots really!) to get that hedge going again.
- Now the laid stems are greening up and the whips are growing.
Hedge Laying
- This is my brand new skill!
- I have a lot to lay, only managed 25m this winter but it was a learning curve. I had help from Neil and Fred, professionals and also friends.
- We did not use stakes and binders and we did employ a fairly natural style retaining many of the twiggy branches. Whist the skill level required to do this is much less it still achieves the same outcome: a strong stock proof hedge, really thick which can be managed as it grows outwards each year.
- Now they are greening up and the hawthorn is just about to pop!