Tools and trees (From Smallholder)

Tools and trees

7:50am Saturday 19th November 2011 in Conservation

In part one of this article I looked at why you should consider traditional hedgerow management and the wildlife and landscape advantages of doing so. In this part I’ll look at the trees you can use and tools that will help you do the job.

Managing a hedge In the years after laying a hedge, the trees will produce growth from the cut bases that will rocket skyward and help make the hedge even more of a barrier. As this happens the pleacher will, over the course of several years, die.

The strap, its life support mechanism, cannot compete with the new growth from the base, with the full power of the roots behind it. It will, though, until it is smothered, provide flowers and fruit and as it rots will provide food and a home for fungi, insects and a whole host of species that make a home from dead wood.

As the hedge becomes more overgrown you can cut it back to suit your taste and needs, but be aware that this ought to be done after the bird nesting season is over. It is wise to give the hedge a light trim in the first year and to trim it every year after to thicken it up. When trimming you can look back at your earlier work and really start to learn the lessons from it.

There is nothing like knowing you will be laying the hedge again to ensure you do a proper job the first time around, though you may well be waiting 20 years to have to do it again.

It may interest you to know that of the 330,000 miles or so of hedge in the country, only 28 per cent is considered to be in favourable condition, either through over trimming or neglect.

Trees in the Hedge Hedgerow trees can be very valuable for wildlife. Birds such as thrushes and blackbirds require a little height for delivering their evening and morning song. A few hedgerow trees will make the landscape more appealing for them.

Mature oaks, ash and sycamore, for example, will tend to provide a lot of shade, and hedges underneath these trees may show reduced growth and you may have to cut and lay dead material to make a “dead hedge” to replace and augment what little natural growth is present.

To mitigate this problem, young and semi-mature trees can be managed by having their lower branches trimmed or removed. This “crown raising” will not damage the tree but will ensure light penetrates through them. Choosing trees for a hedge can be a nice exercise; I like to choose fruit trees such as crab apple as feature trees or trees with good blossoms such as rowan.

What trees can be laid?

This largely depends on what you have to start with. In the majority of cases you are dealing with hawthorn and blackthorn. If you are lucky you will have lots of hazel (great for poles and without thorns) and trees like field maple that lay easily.

I have had good success with most species, though I tend to cut out rapid growing things such as sycamore, willow, poplar, birch and ash (though the latter does provide great poles and stakes). I tend to leave oaks as feature trees but will lay in crab apple, holly, beech, cherry, hornbeam, spindle and sweet chestnut.

If you are planning to plant a new hedge I would plant six whips per metre, four of hawthorn, one of hazel and one of another species to give you a thick diverse hedge, with oaks as features every 20 metres or so, but that is just my taste.

It might be better to look at the hedges around you and try to emulate what grows best in your locality. If you have the time, gather seed from your local hedges as well and grow those trees on to plant into your hedge if you develop any gaps.