5/2/2024

Monthly musings: Is the aesthetic value of hedgerows being lost?

By Henrietta Appleton, Policy Officer (England)

Hedge and brood-rearing strip at the Allerton ProjectWalking the dogs at this time of year provides a wonderful perspective on the architecture of the countryside. Many parts of the English rolling landscape are criss-crossed by hedgerows, which if one stops and looks provide an interesting perspective on the history of the landscape being observed.

Hedges identify field boundaries, prevent stock from wandering and provide shelter. But they also delineate lanes, bridleways, footpaths and other historic byways. Where I live these are often old droving roads from the time when farmers moved their livestock to market on foot, travelling for several days from Wales say to London; or the now often lost holloways of southern England, where constant use resulted in them ‘sinking’ below surrounding ground level due to the soft stone geology.

But looking closer at the hedge itself can provide more cultural history. Relict hedges can delineate long-forgotten boundaries and marches, and provide evidence of changes in farming from livestock to arable, therefore making the hedge redundant, and management practices with signs of former coppicing or laying.

As the BBC article on the work, led by the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, mapping our hedgerows points out, hedges have been in existence since the Bronze Age as a means of marking ownership boundaries and keeping in livestock. There have been times when hedgerow planting was greater than others such as during the various Enclosure periods. In the 14th to 17th centuries, the open field and common land system was converted into ‘privatised’ areas of land (facilitated by the Statute of Merton). But the greatest change was initiated by the Enclosure Acts in the 18th and 19th centuries. In contrast, the post-war drive for food production and the increasing intensification of land saw significant hedgerow removal, with about half lost between the 1940s and 1990s. In each case the change in attitude towards hedgerows was encouraged by government policy and legislation.

Roll forward to now and the same applies. Hedgerows have become another tool of policy – this time for biodiversity, flood prevention and net zero reasons.

Whilst the value of hedgerows to these goals is not questioned, I am concerned that policy is creating an homogenised landscape. The aesthetic and cultural value of hedgerows is being undermined.

Hedgerow planting is now largely based on hawthorn, with the inclusion of dogwood, blackthorn and field maple (the traditional hedge mix on the Woodland Trust website), and management is usually done by flail. Whilst government replanting schemes encourage the use of species from the local area, with no one species comprising more than 70% of the hedge, I am concerned that many of the regional differences in species are being lost. The Devon Hedges website lists 24 species of plant that are frequently found in Devon.

In the past, things were different with no two areas having the same hedges or styles reflecting the climate, landscape and raw materials of each area. As with dry stone walls in the Yorkshire Dales, where folklore has it that if a Dalesman was blindfolded and dropped into a dale he would know where he was by the construction of the dry stone walls, there were differences between counties in how the layered hedge was made and ‘bound’ as well as in the species used. For example, in the livestock farming areas such as Derbyshire, a strong, stock-proof hedge is created by weaving the layed stems in front and behind the stakes; in Devon and Dorset the hedge is laid on top of a bank; and in the Midlands, where the livestock was cattle and horses, which required hedges to be able to withstand the weight of the animal pushing against them, the finished height was higher and hazel binders were woven along the top to give maximum strength. In contrast, in Yorkshire, where hedges delineated fields in sheep/arable rotations, the laid hedge might be thin as initially (and even up to five years) arable crops would be in the field, giving the hedge time to regenerate before grazing off by stock.

Such skills have been lost due to the cost and time to lay a hedge, and the easy solution now provided to keep stock in – the metal or electric fence. You can often see the traces of this practice in the bottom of a neglected hedge, as you can coppicing in woodland or hedgerows. Coppicing provided the farmer with firewood, thatching spars, hurdle timber, etc. Hornbeam was a favoured species that is not seen much these days.

The English landscape would also have comprised areas that were unhedged. I have already referred to the dry stone walls of the uplands, but the Fens, Romney Marsh and the chalk belt from Yorkshire to Dorset were also devoid of hedges with stone-faced banks, wattle hurdles and drainage ditches forming the boundaries. There is also the question of hedgerow trees. These are now being promoted by government policy but this practice was not widespread. We wrote a blog a while back pointing out that hedges have the potential to host 14 million trees, even omitting open arable landscapes and the hill fringe. The right-tree-right-place mantra applies to hedges as well as hedgerow trees, which, if introduced to open landscapes, can alter their cultural characteristics.

These cultural differences are a key part of our landscape, and as I walk my dog and look at the ‘skeleton’ of hedgerows across my local countryside, I mourn the fact that hedges have become another policy tool. Their biodiversity and carbon value is being promoted at the expense of their aesthetic and cultural value.

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Comments

Zombie Hedgerows

at 20:45 on 20/02/2024 by Andrew Sharkey

While I could agree more with the sentiment of this well written article - especially that we are in danger of again loosing another icon of local and regional identity in terms of the species mix and management of hedgerows I think there is a more insidious aspect affecting this very backbone of so much of our countryside and that is long term neglect. How many landscape when you look across them from a distance appear to have a robust and thriving network of hedgerows and trees, but on closer inspection these are gappy, made up of single hawthorns or trees with no protection and no regeneration. I refer to these as Zombie Hedgerows - alive but only just and they will ultimately die and be lost. Yes we have to look safeguard our local management styles but we also need to reflect on just what our landscape will look like in 25-50 years if the basic arn't kept up with as well - protection / gapping up and restoring the basic structure of much of hedgerow system would be a start.

Value of Hedgerows

at 13:52 on 14/02/2024 by W Gascoigne

We are lucky here, in that my grandfather didn't tear out hedgerows when everyone else was post war. it must be remembered this was GOVERNMENT Policy to increase field sizes and hence 'efficiency' Farmers get the blame but it was Ministry of Agriculture pressure and I distinctly remember Farmers being made to feel they were 'letting the side down' if they didn't! The consequence of this is relatively small field sizes and a great deal of expense maintaining them, in the region of tens of thousands of pounds annually.....it is high time Farmers were paid so much a metre to look after them! Its all very well being paid to put new hedges in, where they may have been taken out but people who DIDN'T rip them out should also be supported!

Hedges

at 10:04 on 14/02/2024 by Ted Williams

A well discussed subject. AND for those who look, one we can all see!! While farming a “traditional “ mixed arable and livestock system, hedgerows an integral, and managed part of my life and business. Many points already made well, might I add… Laying/pleaching hedges is a skill. It is work. Winter work, which, unless funded, is not an “earner”. But few more pleasing in the farming calendar and a legacy. Many hedges are re-invigorated in this way, and only so much can be done each winter by “on-farm”labour, or increasingly (because of a significant countrywide shortage of manpower per acre) by contract teams of skilled people, generally doing much “all at once” on each farm. Usually following a period of “neglect”, instead of a continual rotation by planning/best interest on farm. Government grant aid for such work, beneficial to the achievement of the mileages done, stipulates fencing to protect the “integrity of boundary “ An example of the “one size fits all” already discussed re species. Supermarket mentality. On Exmoor, the high hedge banks topped with beech hedges, a landscape speciality, are beautifully managed and much farm/contractor winter work is witnessed, but, largely, unnecessary fencing prevents these features acting as shelter( for particularly ewes and lambs),for their early years of re growth , and more importantly a catastrophe for some of the iconic wild red deer, a real “welfare issue”as they attempt to jump in and out of these enclosures over wire, bank and wire, many being lamed. One more point:-to be best for wildlife, hedges should be min 6’ tall, have a”tin hat top” ie NOT be trimmed so they are flat topped, and trimmed late winter where possible to allow all fruits and berries and shelter to give maximum benefit. Much arable land has field margins up to six meters wide, yet the hedges are trimmed to near extinction, when every arable land hedge could certainly be encouraged for wildlife by trimming every other year/and modest expansion,multiply its benefits,AND by default, add to the length of life of the flail trimmer!!!

Regional Hedge Species

at 19:21 on 13/02/2024 by Sophie

Very good points. I have tried to find out what the regional species for hedges are, but I am having difficulty finding anything for Cheshire.

Aesthetic value of hedgerows being lost.

at 18:37 on 13/02/2024 by Jonny Hogg

Thanks for the interesting article, while a lot of what you say is true, I'd like to make a few points, as a farmer primarily and having laid hedges professionally for thirty years and for over forty in total I'm constantly frustrated by the persistent claims, particularly on public platforms such as Countryfile etc. about the loss of hedgerows with not a single reference to the fact that the loss as been reversed. I believe that since the 1970s more hedges have been planted/ restored, than have been removed. Over the last twenty years I have planted more hedges than I've laid ( this is just the way the work has demanded, not through choice) and I agree with you on the species point, I've planted the countryside stewardship mix which is concocted by ecologists with no regard to regional history, in Cumbria our hedges are mainly hawthorn and Blackthorn, the dog rose and other species would be brought in by birds etc and naturally populate vacant hedgerow gaps. I would like to see an emphasis in the media on the fact that the hedge was always and still remains to be a farming implement, as you rightly point out the purpose is to delineate field and ownership boundaries and provide shelter as well as barriers to straying stock. It is always portrayed in TV and other media broadcasts that hedges are wildlife corridors etc. with the true purpose being put second, and of course the much maligned farmer is always vilified when the flail is seen at work, if the public were to see a gang of labourers with Slashers and sycles cutting a hedge there would be no complaints, the flail mower is just doing the same job in a more efficient and cost effective way and without being regularly cut the hedges would be thin and open with less value to nesting and roosting birds as well as to the farmer. It would be nice for an organisation like GWCT to point out the value of the historic and ongoing input of farming to the management of hedges at a time when almost all other public forums seem all too eager to blame farmers for everything that's seen as negative, the current CSS regime encourages farmers to carry out all capital works including hedgelaying/planting/coppicing, in the first two or three years, instead of spreading it over the ten years of the scheme as in previous policy, this means that in some places entire farms covering three or four hundred acres have layed or coppiced almost every hedge leaving no diversity across the landscape, this is the result of university educated ecologists delivering advice and instruction on subjects in which they are void of any hands on experience and is in my experience, doing more harm to the landscape and to conservation than good. I once looked across the Solway plain from an elevated position while laying a hedge and thought that if every field corner (a lot of which are now awkward to large machinery) had one or two,or three native trees planted in it, there would be little or no loss to the farmer but the landscape would be dramatically changed. Perhaps this could be put to the relevant authorities for future consideration. Jonny Hogg Hedgelayer, conservationist, wildfowler and fisherman. and still a farmer at heart. Cumbria .

Hedges

at 17:06 on 13/02/2024 by claxby pluckacre

Thanks, interesting read and good to see interest in hedgerow benefits gaining traction. However....not one mention of the flail mower and the damage they do ,from destroying food sources,destroying roost ares, removing valuable shade from beast human and surrounding crops. The flail only self perpetuates more use of the flail due to a secondary,unruly growth from the smashed fibres of wood that then grow from a knuckle formed by these fibrous growth areas, thus demanding annual thrashing by the flail. The cost to the farmers pocket is a totally unnecessary input that can be avoided. The NX poured into the atmosphere...no need !! The soil compaction caused by Goliath size tractor driving on the land. The hydraulic oil that leaks out from the unmaintained flail head and rams.

The aesthetic Value of Hedgerows

at 16:33 on 13/02/2024 by Brian Martin

Thank you Henrietta for your most interesting and well-written musing on hedgerows. Irrespective of the pros and cons of varying regimes of hedgerow content and care you have drawn attention to a most important aspect of country life. If we lose our drive to protect beauty as well as the beast we will be greatly impoverished. Fortunately we now have a formidable army of informed land managers redressing centuries of imbalance.

Hedges

at 10:54 on 13/02/2024 by John Jervoise

We are up on the North Hampshire Downs and our existing hedge character is changing for a different reason . When hedges were cut in August they had time to recover slightly and provide more winter cover, i wonder too if they were more flexible so were damaged less. Now cutting is delayed farmers are too busy to cut September October, so cuttingh take place in winter and cut ends are exposed to frost and cold so i don't think they are regrowing as well the next year. as result our hedges appear to be becoming more woody, gappy, see through and a less welcoming and protective environment for wildlife. I think the hedge cutting should be moved back to end July and interested what other think or whether there is any evidence around this ? I also agree that hedgerow tree not only suppress hedge plants under them, but create ideal spots for raptors to hunt from , and corvids to nest spot from .

The Great Big Dorset Hedge Project

at 9:10 on 09/02/2024 by John Calder

I share some of your concerns, Henrietta, but I am not pessimistic. My focus is on the impact of ELMS on hedgerows in Dorset. As Project Manager for the Great Big Dorset Hedge Project, I have drawn 40 farmers so far into our project to have their hedgerows surveyed by our volunteers (numbering 300 currently). We ease the pain, for each farmer in turn, as they prepare to enter the Sustainable Farming Incentive with the three hedgerow actions at the top of their priority list. We can facilitate improved hedgerow condition all over the county, one farm at a time, but it is for the farmer to determine what best suits their landscape in terms of hedge structure, species mix and ongoing maintenance and they will have a strong view about what their hedges mean in the landscape they manage. I am sure these 40 farmers will not allow policy to erase their own convictions and their own sense of the heritage value of hedgerows. Can this be the start of a sustainable conversation between me and the GWCT about how best to progress our project in collaboration with yourselves? I hope so. Our project will take decades to sweep across Dorset and so far collaborations have worked well with CPRE, DWT and the NFU. Let me know what you think.

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