UK: Turning over a new leaf: the humble hedge stages a remarkable comeback

The emerald-green five-year-old hawthorn hedge glistens in autumnal sunshine. In the cider apple orchard and grass pastures below, younger hedges shoot off towards a fast-flowing trout stream.

History has come full circle in Blackmore Farm, which nestles in the foothills of the Quantocks in Somerset. The owner, Ian Dyer, remembers helping his father, who arrived as a tenant farmer in the 1950s, grub out old hedges in the 1960s and 1970s. But – like increasing numbers of landowners – he has hired a hedgelayer to bring back his hedges to provide habitats for wildlife, capture carbon and slow water pouring off fields into rivers.

“In my life, I’ve probably taken out three miles of hedge. It was seen as progress at the time. The government was pushing for more and more production,” he says, standing in the long grass on his 750-acre arable and beef farm. “But we are putting back all the ancient hedgerows. History is cyclical – it all goes around.”

Dyer, 62, has planted 1km of new hedges in the last five years and has noticed more insects, nesting birds and small mammals, including water voles, since the work started.

One study found that hedgerows provide 21 ecosystem services – more than any other habitat.“My views have changed in the last 10 years. I want to live in a green and pleasant land – not in a [ecological] desert,” he remarks. “It’s starting to look like I remember it as a five-year-old boy.”

The National Hedgelaying Society, which held its national championship event this weekend, says its members have been inundated with requests to lay hedges this season, which runs from September to April. “There is more work than anyone could ever do for the rest of their lives,” says Claire Maymon, one of the charity’s trustees. “Our founders in the 1970s were worried the craft would be lost for ever, but now we are worried that we don’t have enough young hedgelayers coming through to meet demand.”

The Campaign to Protect Rural England estimates that over 25,000 workers will be needed to deliver on the Committee on Climate Change’s call to plant 200,000km of new hedges in the UK. The committee has calculated that the nation’s hedgerows will have to be expanded by 40% in order to reach net-zero by 2050.

The environment secretary, George Eustice, has called hedges important ecological building blocks that provide shelter, nesting habitat, flowers and berries for a wide range of wildlife. The government wants the post-Brexit agricultural subsidy system to encourage farmers to better maintain hedges. A pilot scheme, offering farmers up to £24 per 100 metres of hedgerows, starts next month.

Hedges need to be carefully managed throughout their lives, otherwise they thin and eventually gaps appear. Paul Lamb, the hedgelayer helping to transform Dyer’s farm, “pleaches” – or splits – hawthorn, blackthorn and spindle stems so that they grow back dense and thick next spring. “Every hedgelayer has their own style,” he says, pushing back a prickly curtain of foliage to reveal a complex, woody interior. “For me, it’s so satisfying to plant and lay a hedge and then see it full of birds, insects and wildlife.”

Business is booming for Lamb, who lives in a converted horsebox on a nearby farm. He has never been busier, with commercial farmers making up a growing proportion of his work. Lamb’s two biggest jobs this season are on farms, with 850 metres of replanting on one farm and six weeks work laying more than 500 metres of hedgerow on another.

“When I started hedging, it was a way of earning a bit of beer money on a Saturday. I would never have expected to be booked up for a whole season. But here I am, booked up for this season and half of the next – and still people are phoning me with jobs. There is a renewed interest in conservation and craft – and a feeling that we need to live in a more sustainable way.”

Britain lost half its hedgerows in the decades after the second world war as farmers were encouraged to create large arable fields to increase production. Since then, legal protections have been introduced and hedges are no longer being ripped out – but the decline has continued due to poor management, including some landowners over-trimming hedges mechanically, without simulating new growth below. But the growing demand for traditional hedgelaying leaves many in the craft feeling optimistic.

Nigel Adams sits on the HedgeLink steering group, which advises Defra. He says there has has been a sea-change in attitudes, with everyone from the National Farming Union to Natural England calling for more hedges. “Hedgerows have gone unnoticed for years but suddenly everybody is realising they are the veins of our countryside,” he says.

Adams, who lays hedges throughout the country, including on Prince Charles’s estates, believes the role of hedges should not be underestimated. “Insects follow hedges and bats hunt along hedges,” he says. “If we didn’t have hedgerows, then we would be living in a barren wasteland.”

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/uknews/turning-over-a-new-leaf-the-humble-hedge-stages-a-remarkable-comeback/ar-AAPROn3?ocid=chromentpnews