Hedges and Hedgelaying E-Book

Murray Maclean

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In recent years there has been a much greater appreciation of the enormous contribution that hedges make to the countryside. Today, their beauty, their ability to provide wind protection and contain livestock, their environmental importance and their significance as a wildlife habitat, are all widely recognized. Not surprisingly, this transformation in the way we view hedges has, in turn, produced a welcome revival in the ancient craft of hedgelaying. Whether you own hedges, are thinking of growing them, or just have an interest in hedgerows, this fascinating, well-illustrated book will be of value to you. Hedges and Hedgelaying - A Guide to Planting, Management and Conservation contains of wealth of practical information and covers: the selection of hedgerow shrubs and trees and the associated significance of soil types and topography; the planting of hedges and the necessary preparation work; the use of trees in the hedgerow and the value of field margins; weed, pest and disease control, and hedge cutting, maintenance and protection; the craft of hedgelaying and the tools and processes involved. Well illustrated with nearly 200 drawings and photographs, this is an indispensable guide for all those interested in managing and preserving our hedgerows for future generations.

Leseprobe

HEDGES and

HEDGELAYING

A GUIDE TO PLANTING, MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION

Murray Maclean

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2006 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2015

© Murray Maclean 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 055 3

Disclaimer Chainsaws and all other tools and equipment used in the management of hedges should be used in strict accordance with both the current health and safety regulations and the manufacturer’s instructions. The author and publisher do not accept any responsibility in any manner whatsoever for any error or mission, or any loss, damage, injury, adverse outcome, or liability of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any of the information contained in this book, or reliance upon it.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Evolution of the Hedge

From Anglo-Saxon woodland clearances to the prosperity of the Middle Ages; the enclosure movement; the impact of the railways; the Industrial Revolution and agricultural depression; the Great War; World War II and airfield building; post-war farm mechanization and prosperity; the twenty-first century

2 The Choice of Trees and Shrubs

Species suitable for a country hedgerow; and species to be avoided; regional differences in the choice of species; plant provenance

3 The Influence of the Landscape and Soil Types

Soil surveys; the local landscape

4 Wildlife Conservation

Birds; mammals; invertebrates; wild flowers

5 The Preparation and Planting of Hedges

Planning; choice and supply of planting material; ground preparations; planting time and conditions; hedge position; marking out; care of plants prior to planting; single or double-row spacings; hand planting; machine planting; care after planting

6 Regional and Alternative Hedge Forms

The Devonwade hedge-bank; the Pembroke hedge-bank; a hedge with two faces; willow hedges; holly hedges; the holm oak (evergreen oak) hedge

7 The Use of Trees in Hedgerows

Suitable fruiting and timber trees for use in hedges; common trees not recommended for hedgerow planting; spacing

8 The Value of Field Margins

A habitat for wildlife; creating an arable field margin; natural sward regeneration; sown sward mixes; the timing of mowings; exclusion of fertilizers and pesticides

9 Weed Control

Organic mulches; polythene and woven matting; the considered use of herbicides

10 Disease and Pest Control

Hygiene and the limited use of pesticides

11 Hedge Maintenance and Protection

Brushing up; coppicing; mechanical trimming; individual plant protection; fencing

12 The Development of Hedge Laying

Early references leading on to today’s revival of the craft

13 Hedge Laying

Equipment and tools; safety procedures; how to cut and lay a hedge; The National Hedge-Laying Society

14 Regional Styles

Different county styles

Appendix: British Imperial and Continental Metric Measures

References and Further Reading

Index

Acknowledgements

However much knowledge I have gained regarding hedges during my working life, I still continue to learn more. The discovery of new ideas and information continues to shape my understanding of our rich heritage of hedges and their role in the countryside.

In writing this new book on hedges and hedge laying, I have been helped by others who have specific knowledge or skills that have been invaluable to me, enabling me to present a more balanced and fuller coverage of the subject. My sincerest thanks go to the following:

Nigel Adams

Hedge layer

Janet Allen (ADAS)

Weed and disease control

Caroline Benson

Museum of English Rural Life, Reading: photographs

Carolyn Blackmore

Computer assistance

John Davison

Hollies

Chris Honeywell

Photographer

Gordon Maclean

Photographs (my father died in 1999)

Clive Leeke

Hedge layer and instructor

Valerie Petts

Line drawings

John Savings

Hedge layer and my instructor

Chris Tucker

Bomford Turner Ltd, hedge trimmers

I reserve my deepest gratitude for those who have given me the most consistent help throughout the preparation of this book, and without whose help this undertaking would have been much more difficult. My wife Joey has read carefully through all that has been written, and made corrections and suggestions that have been most welcome.

I have been involved with the growing and planting of hedges for many years, but I did not have the same deep understanding of the art of hedge laying; for practical training in this skill I have been extremely fortunate to have been able to turn to John Savings. John has taught me the basic skills, and has answered every question with the patience and good humour for which he is renowned. He is a skilled, professional hedge layer who has won many competitions and was honoured to instruct His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales (currently the patron of the National Hedge-laying Society).

Introduction

In recent years hedges have enjoyed a much greater level of public awareness and interest in their wellbeing, which has resulted in a greater appreciation of their beauty and benefit to us all.

In the years following the end of World War II our long heritage of hedgerows suffered in the drive to increase agricultural output to feed a nation that had lost many of its rural roots. Prior to the war, a burgeoning urban population had been increasingly fed by food imports from around the world. Shortages of food during the war galvanized the Ministry of Agriculture to increase home food production. This ‘food from our own resources’ programme continued until well into the late 1980s before enough questions were asked about the high cost of support for farmers and the increasingly detrimental effects this was having on the fabric of the countryside.

Farmers had responded to the wartime need for increased food production by embracing mechanization wholeheartedly. The horse as the main source of power on the land was almost completely replaced by the tractor within fifteen years following the end of the war. With the advent of the tractor came a vast array of new machinery that the tractor could pull and operate. Both became ever larger and more sophisticated, requiring bigger fields within which to work effectively.

So began the widespread removal of hedges across most arable counties of England. The Ministry of Agriculture encouraged this hedge removal with the payment of generous grants to clear and drain land to increase food production and improve efficiency. This drive for greater output enabled food to be produced at a lower cost. Food prices fell steadily in the decades following the war, to the inevitable point where farmers found themselves having to make even further cost savings in order to retain a modest profit from the production of their crops.

As we move into the twenty-first century farmers now face new demands from their masters in government. With cheap food imports once more supplying an increasing proportion of the nation’s food requirement, the pressure to feed the people has been replaced by a need to restore and conserve the landscape for the enjoyment and recreation of an almost totally urban population.

The farmers’ role has changed from being that of respected food producers to the custodians of our rural heritage. Grants for food production have been replaced with mountains of directives and forms extolling the virtues of every conceivable aspect of conservation. Hedges, ponds, woodlands, heath and moorland are all now the chosen beneficiaries of grant aid and other inducements to both conserve and extend them.

The implementation of all these new measures has brought with it opportunities for the revival of old country crafts such as hedge laying, hurdle making, coppicing and stone walling; the planting of hedges, copses and woodlands, together with the formation of field margins, are all designed to reverse the steep decline in wild bird and small mammal numbers.

In many areas there has already been a noticeable improvement in the diversity of animal and plant species to be seen and enjoyed by all. The overall length of hedges across the country and the areas of woodland planted are both increasing steadily once more. Wild bird numbers are improving, for raptor species in particular, which must signify that their food sources have also improved in recent years.

There is much more to be done, and this book will help to further a small part of this cause.

CHAPTER 1

The Evolution of the Hedge

THE ROMAN INVASION

We have to thank Julius Caesar for the first written reference to hedges. In his report on the battle for Gaul (northern Europe) in 57 BC he describes how the Nervii tribe, on the borders of Belgium and France, had constructed hedges by cutting and laying small trees and binding them with brambles and thorn to provide a stockproof barrier to keep their cattle safe from marauding local tribes and to thwart his cavalry. It is safe to assume that the Britons of the same era would also have developed similar barriers to contain their stock.

Julius Caesar also related that during his first exploratory ‘invasion’ of Britain in 55 BC his soldiers fed themselves by cutting corn grown by the Britons. In his second invasion he demanded corn from the local tribes to feed his troops. Tacitus, writing in 79 AD, recorded that the Britons had a flourishing trade with Gaul, selling them grain in exchange for other goods. The growing of corn in a lowland, wooded landscape would have required protection from the ravages of deer, wild boar and other animals; thus some form of protective enclosure would have been constructed either from light brush cut in the woods, or they could have dug up small thorn and other ‘hedge’ plants to form a living fence, built in conjunction with posts and dead brushwood to protect the young hedge until it matured. We know that the walled enclosure of small fields had been in use as far back as the Neolithic period, particularly in upland areas, where stone was cleared from the land intended for cultivation or for stock retention.

An artist’s impression of a Bronze Age settlement on the banks of a stream. The thatched round houses were a common sight across Britain, situated either on high ground for protection from other marauding tribes or, in settled times, on lower, level terrain near to a water supply and where easily workable land was to hand for growing crops and grazing cattle. The areas cleared in the native woodland for their primitive arable strip cultivations and the wattle enclosures for their livestock were the early beginnings of our field and hedgerow heritage.

The Romans brought to Britain all the trappings of their advanced civilization. They constructed an excellent network of roads to link their garrison towns and other communities, taking over land to build their villas and establish thriving farmsteads across lowland Britain. All this industry would not have been lost on the local tribal groups who embraced the Roman way of life and began to expand their own cropping, clearing more woodland and scrub on the drier, easy-working soils above the flood plains. The raising of cattle had been central to their way of life, but increasingly the cultivation of land gained in its importance to their economy.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS

At the beginning of the third century the Roman occupation came to an end as the Empire began to experience problems at home. Legions were withdrawn, leaving the Romano-British population to defend themselves from the increasing Saxon incursions across the North Sea. A period of increasingly unsettled times followed until the Norman Conquest in 1066.

The Saxon invaders soon began to settle the lands they originally came to conquer, to become known as the Anglo-Saxons. They continued the practice of clearance and cultivation of land across lowland Britain developing the village community as we know it today. Hedges feature in many of the Saxon land charters, and many of their field boundaries exist to this day in those parts of England not subjected to the wholesale hedge removal of the post World War II era.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST

William the Conqueror arrived in 1066, but it took him nearly twenty years to fully subjugate the Saxon population and deal with his own squabbling Norman barons. In 1086 he instigated a full survey and inventory of the whole of England to be compiled into the Doomsday Book, which remains a unique record of the way the country was governed and ordered, in addition to providing William with a census of the population as a basis to tax and control the kingdom.

The king took over the ownership of all land, redistributing it amongst his faithful barons and knights in recognition of their services to him. In addition large areas of mixed woodland were enclosed to form royal hunting forests, further depriving the rural population of their ability to grow their own crops. The feudal system was established, whereby the new baronial land-owning class became responsible to the king for the management of the lands vested in them, either employing men to work for them or sub-letting to tenant farmers. A period of stability ensued with the continuation of a rural economy.

Throughout the Saxon period a patchwork landscape continued to evolve as woodland and scrub were slowly cleared to make way for further arable cultivation. Much of this land was in the proximity of each village, where it formed large open fields, cultivated under a two- or three-field strip system. Each villager held long, narrow strips of land in each of the fields, ostensibly to divide the good and poorer soils up fairly between all the strip holders and to ensure an agreed rotation of crops each year in each field. Other land was held by tenant farmers, which they were able to enclose and farm as they wished.

THE BLACK DEATH

The relative peace of the eleventh to fourteenth centuries was marred by the Black Death in 1349, which claimed nearly half the population and led to a severe depression. With so few people left to cultivate the land, arable cropping diminished; hedges, fences and woodland fell into decay, which would continue until the next era of great change in Tudor times.

These centuries were also marked by wars, both at home and abroad. The Hundred Years war with France (1337—1453) required many men from the shires to fight for the king, further depleting the rural population. This was followed, in 1455, by the Wars of the Roses, a civil war between those of Lancastrian and Yorkist persuasion.

THE TUDOR REFORMATION

Henry VIII will always be remembered for his ‘battles’ with the Pope in Rome, who refused to grant him a divorce from his first wife; this forced him to declare himself to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The refusal of church leaders to agree to his demands led to the suppression of the monasteries. The king took control of all the church’s extensive lands and property, redistributing them to his favourite courtiers. These courtiers had little respect for the church’s tenant farmers, whom they in turn dispossessed of their land. They enclosed more land to provide secure pastures for the grazing of extra sheep. The price of wool had been high and stable for many years and continued to be so. These new ‘wool barons’ demonstrated their new-found wealth by building fine houses and renovating churches, notably in the Cotswolds.

In 1549 Robert Kett, a Norfolk farmer, led the last attempt by tenants and labourers to contain the power of the lords of the manors, who continued to enclose land wherever they could find some small justification, so dispossessing the cottagers from their strips and thereby adding to their hardship. Farming for the wealthy continued to prosper at the expense of the poor until the Civil War in 1642.

In the early sixteenth century the first agricultural writers of merit began to record their observations and make recommendations for the improvement of farming practices. Fitzherbert’s Booke of Husbandry was published in 1523. He was a keen advocate of hedge enclosures:

…it is much better to have several closes and pastures to put his cattle in, which should be quick-setted (hawthorns planted), ditched, and hedged, so as to divide those of different ages as this was more profitable than to have his cattle go before the herdsman (in the common field).

He was followed by Thomas Tusser, whose writings became the handbook for the country gentleman farmer for the next two hundred years.

THOMAS TUSSER

In 1557 there appeared A Hundred Good Pointes of Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser, who went on to expand this celebrated book into Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie before his death in 1580. The books are written in rhyming verse and yet contain many wise observations on the best farming practices of the period. The book’s continued popularity was ensured by William Mavor’s updating of the original rhyming text in 1812. Mavor was a distinguished agricultural writer who realized the lasting value of Tusser’s great work, and added extensive footnotes throughout in order to update the original text.

Harpsden village, near Henley-on-Thames, 1586. This coloured tithe map drawn on vellum by Mathesis Benevolum is held in the Oxfordshire Archives. The colours and detailed representation of this rural landscape show us the diversity of hedgerows and woodland strips that bordered the small arable and grass fields. The detail and shading have all the qualities of a good aerial photograph. Visiting the parish today reveals that some hedges have been removed to form larger fields, but the area retains its narrow, hedged lanes and wooded slopes. (Oxfordshire County Records Office)

Tusser informs us that he was a keen advocate of enclosure, as opposed to open fields (formerly called ‘Champion Country’), and his observations on the care and cultivation of hedges are as valid today as when he wrote them nearly 450 years ago!

October’s husbandry

Sow acorns, ye owners that timber do love, Sow haw and rye with them, the better to prove:

If cattle or coney (rabbit) may enter the crop, Young oak is in danger of loosing his top.

Mavor’s note: This advice is excellent, and it is to be lamented that so few acorns are sown. The first year a thin crop of rye will protect them, after which the plantation should be fenced against cattle and rabbits, even though the hawthorn are sown with them.

Where speedy quickset (hawthorn plants), for a fence you will draw, To sow in the seed of the bramble and haw.

Map of the ‘Manor of Winsly & Parsonage of Haugh’, 1727. The village of Winsley is situated near Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire. The map shows an admirable mixture of freehold fields, woodland and pasture. There are arable strips in the field at the top left of the map, and many fields are shown to have hedge or old woodland strip boundaries. In the centre of the map is an excellent example of the formation of small fields by clearances made within a large wooded area. This area has now been totally cleared of woodland to provide open pasture on level land at the top of a hill. (The Museum of English Rural Life, The University of Reading)

Mavor’s note: Brambles might be planted with advantage, and trained as vines, for their fruit. Haws, it is almost needless to say, are the fruits of the hawthorn.

January’s husbandry

Leave grubbing or pulling of bushes, my son, Till timely thy fences require to be done. Then take of the best, for to furnish thy turn, And home with the rest, for the fier to burn.

Mavor’s note: To leave a sufficiency of bushes, in order to fill up gaps in hedges, as occasion may require, is obviously right.

In every green, if the fence be not thine, Now stub up the bushes, the grass be fine,

Lest neighbour do daily so hack them, believe,

That neither thy bushes, nor pasture can thrive.

Mavor’s note: It would be a beneficial practice if hedges were constantly kept trimmed and clipped, at the height of four feet. Not only would the fences be more durable, but corn or grass would thrive better in their vicinity. A careless or slovenly farmer tempts his neighbour to trespass, believe, or in the night.

February’s husbandry

Buy quickset at market, new gathered and small,

Buy bushes or willow, to fence it withal:

Set willow to grow, in the stead of a stake,

For cattle, in summer, a shadow to make.

Mavor’s note: Quicksets (hawthorn plants) should not be too old before they are planted; and except in mending gaps, they are now secured by post and rails. It is judicious to plant willow-poles, instead of dead stakes, not only for durability but profit, where the situation is favourable, for the production of this valuable aquatic.

An eighteenth-century round house beside the main Oxford to Swindon road (the A420) at Longworth. It may have been a tollhouse on the early Oxford to Bristol turnpike road. Nearby stands the ‘Lamb and Flag’ public house, which had been a coaching inn on the turnpike. The colour shades in the old hedge indicate a wide selection of species. It contains thirteen different species within a 400m (1,300ft) length, and eight species in random 30m (100ft) stretches, indicating that this hedge could have been beside the roadway for over 700 years, taking us back to the Middle Ages. In fields to the south of the road is situated Cherbury Camp, an impressive Iron Age fort with a large banked enclosure and three ring ditches.

AN AGE OF CHANGE

The eighteenth century was to witness great changes in English agriculture. Open (common) field farming was in decline, and the enclosure movement was gaining momentum. The population of Britain was expanding fast as the seeds of the coming Industrial Revolution were being sown. Jethro Tull, from Shalbourne in Berkshire, invented the seed drill in about 1701, but did not publish his book Horse-Hoeing Husbandry until 1731. The ability to sow seeds in uniform lines and then be able to horse-hoe between them to control weeds was a remarkable leap forwards in the production of cereal crops. Such mechanization could not be implemented in the increasingly out-dated strip-farming fields. Field sizes had to be increased and enclosed to protect the crops from wandering village stock if food production were to keep pace with an expanding economy.

The enclosure movement began slowly at the beginning of the century, the early enclosures being made by the agreement of all parties concerned. As the century progressed, so the rate of enclosure increased. The following list gives some indication of the speed of change:

Queen Anne

1704—14 Two acts enclosing 1,439 acres (583ha)

George I

1714—27 Sixteen acts enclosing 17,960 acres (7,271ha)

George II

1727—60 220 acts enclosing 318,778 acres (129,060ha)

George III

1760—97 1,532 acts enclosing 2,804,197 acres (1,135,302ha)

When an act of enclosure was granted, it was binding in law;many were passed without the willing agreement of all the small villagers, who had held strips in the old open-field system. Many of these dispossessed labourers either had to seek employment with the new landowners, or move away to work in the towns and cities.

Enclosure was a turbulent era for agriculture, but time would show that it was necessary if the nation were to be able to feed itself adequately as it moved steadily towards its industrial destiny. At the end of the eighteenth century the nation was at war with France once more, this time against the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had declared that England was ‘a nation of shop-keepers’ that could be starved into submission by blockading its ports. But he miscalculated the strength of the Navy under Nelson, and the ability of the English farmer to respond to the need for increased output from their ‘improved’ lands.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The old winding, rutted roads and the wide drovers’ tracks were becoming anachronisms in an increasingly busy and ordered countryside. The Duke of Bridgewater commissioned the first canal from Manchester to Worsley in 1755, to be followed by the works of Thomas Telford, the famous canal and road builder. In 1819 a Scotsman named Macadam first introduced the use of compacted, broken stone to form the basis of the roads we know today.

The heyday of canal building lasted from 1760 to 1830, by which time over 3,000 miles (5,000km) of inland waterways linked all the main industrial towns of the North and Midlands, carrying coal and goods to supply the booming steel and cotton industries.

The canals, and later the railways, cut straight across the open countryside, changing field shapes, which required new hedging and fencing. As the pace of canal building began to slacken the railway era began, with great engineers such as George Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel building lines to connect all major centres of industry. These two great men were to transform transport, and their impact on the countryside will remain for ever.

By the end of the nineteenth century nearly every town in the country was linked by either a main or a branch line; most important centres of trade were also served by the canal system. All these transport arteries were hedged and fenced to keep farm stock from wandering on to the track or into the canals. In common with the enclosure hedges of the eighteenth century, most of these new hedges were of hawthorn and some blackthorn. W. J. Malden, writing in the 1899 Journal of the RASE, provided a detailed specification for the Midland Railway hedges:

Double rows are planted in parallel lines, the lines being 4 inches apart and the plants 8 inches from one to the other in the rows. The planting is done so that one row breaks joint (is staggered) with the other. 100 plants to the chain (22yds or 20 metres) – 3 year old Quicks (hawthorn) are purchased at 11 shillings (55p) per 1000. The quicks are cut back at planting, left untrimmed till they attain a height of 6–8 feet (2.5m), when they are layered, being subsequently trimmed in late autumn/early winter.

This description indicates the high standard and density necessary to quickly provide a thick stock-proof hedge capable of ensuring the safety of rail travellers from wandering farm animals.

THE FIRST AGRICULTURAL CENSUS

Accurate information on agricultural output should have been a government priority with the expansion of farming in the early eighteenth century, but it was not until 1793 that the efforts of Sir John Sinclair MP persuaded the government to establish the Board of Agriculture to gather statistical information and instigate improvements in farming practices through a series of county surveys, still of great value to those engaged in historical rural research. In 1866 a bill was introduced empowering the Board of Trade to collect information on crop production from all farmers. These records show the changing pattern of farm crops to this day.

There is no comparable information on the planting or removal of hedges. The enclosure awards rarely gave any detail of the amount of hedges planted. Similarly, the Ministry of Agriculture (now called the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, or DEFRA) is unwilling to release statistics on the amount of grant-aided hedge removal following World War II, grants that were available up to the early 1990s.

The overall amount of hedgerow planting and removal during the period 1860 to 1940 is likely to have been in balance; a time of some agricultural progress interspersed with years of depression.

The examination of enclosure awards can be most rewarding to the trained eye; a wider understanding of these documents can be gained from regular research allied to a practical knowledge of local field patterns. It should not be assumed that all these maps were correctly drawn up, as can be illustrated by a detailed map of Frilford parish in Oxfordshire, dated 1846, owned by the author. The map was drawn up by Commissioner Edward Driver to indicate the line of a new road to bypass the main part of the hamlet. It shows a field boundary to the north of the ‘West Field’, which is in existence to this day. Yet in 1860 when Edward Driver’s nephew was appointed commissioner to draw up the Frilford Enclosure Award, he copied from the same map but omitted this hedge and ditch line. The moral of this tale is that research from old maps must be corroborated by evidence on the ground and from other maps, wherever possible.

Aerial photographs or visual surveys can reveal the line of old hedges, ditches and roads, especially if the photograph is taken when the ground has been freshly ploughed, or during summer drought conditions under a grass or cereal crop.

Photography was invented in 1835, so from the latter part of the nineteenth century we have an excellent photographic record of farming practices and country scenery.

TWO WORLD WARS

The events of the twentieth century were dominated by World Wars I and II, wars that had an immense impact on every aspect of the British way of life and its countryside. Prior to the start of World War I, the English landscape had remained almost untouched since the enclosure movement two hundred years earlier.

The methods of cultivation had changed little since Jethro Tull’s invention of the seed drill, and the horse remained the motive power on the land. The advent of steam power made little impact on the majority of farms, except for the annual visit of the threshing team, which was powered by a thirsty steam engine. The field size on most farms was too small to accept the steam-ploughing sets, designed to work efficiently in the large open fields of the eastern counties.

The demands for factory workers in the munitions and supply factories of the Great War led to a further drift of labour from the land, as well as the many young men who went ‘to fight for king and country’ in the mud of Flanders fields, many never to return. Farmers were left short of staff, and yet witnessed the potential of the new tractors, which the government supplied during the war years to bridge the labour shortage gap. Those farmers who embraced mechanization realized its potential to increase crop production, but it was to be a repeat performance twenty years later when the storm clouds gathered to herald in World War II that finally set the seal on mechanization on the land. Government support for farming after World War I had been short-lived, with many thousands of acres becoming derelict throughout the depression of the twenties and early thirties. Hedges and ditches fell into disrepair, as there was insufficient income to do more than ‘dog-and-stick’ farming.

In the late thirties the government took heed of the warning signs, and began actively to encourage farmers to increase food production. At the outbreak of war there were approximately 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) less land in arable cultivation than in 1914. Unlike the First War, the management of agricultural production was firmly controlled from the start of the war by the establishment of the County War Agricultural Committees, or ‘War Ags’ as they became known. They undertook the task of increasing output by the reclamation of derelict land and by directing production. In Leicestershire the percentage of arable land went up from 15 to 50 per cent in four years, and nationally it was increased by 4,500,000 acres (1,821,860 ha); however, whilst much scrubland was brought back into cropping, there was little direct hedge removal as part of the restoration of arable cropping.

The construction of airfields for the Royal Air Force and USAAF, and training camps for the two armies, consumed thousands of acres of prime farmland right across southern and eastern England. C. S. Orwin in his book The Future of Farming (1930) illustrated the ease of hedgerow removal by citing the consequences of building a new aerodrome at Abingdon in Oxfordshire, where 2.5 miles of hedgerow were removed to clear the necessary 432 acres (175ha). At the nearby Grove airfield, 5 miles of hedgerow were grubbed out to convert 272 acres (110ha) of prime milk-producing vale land into an open expanse for the three runways.

Across southern, central and eastern counties of England airfields were constructed in such numbers that US pilots joked that they ‘…could taxi the whole length of the island without leaving a runway!’ The construction of all these operational airfields, together with their satellite airfields built nearby (in case the main runways were bombed while the squadrons were airborne) resulted in the need for substantial areas of prime farmland, with thousands of miles of hedges being removed from the landscape.

By the end of the war there were over 600 airfields covering 360,000 acres (145,750ha). In addition, nearly 4,500 army camps had been built to shelter the troops in the run-up to D-Day. Since the end of the war, few of these sites have been fully returned to agricultural use. Some have become industrial parks, while others remain to this day as bleak, wind-swept areas of corn and concrete.

POST-WAR MECHANIZATION

After the end of the war the Ministry of Agriculture gave farmers every possible encouragement to continue increasing production. The grants for the purchase of new machinery and the erection of new buildings went hand in hand with drainage schemes and the grant-aided removal of hedges to allow for the ever-increasing size of tractors and machinery to be used effectively in larger fields. The Countryside Commission calculated that between 1947 and 1985 about 155,000km of hedgerows were lost, representing a reduction of almost a quarter of the nation’s stock of hedges – or a length of hedgerow sufficient to girdle the earth four times!

Another wartime introduction was the widespread use of herbicides and insecticides, which played a dramatic part in increasing the yield and quality of arable and horticultural crops; but it became apparent by the 1970s that the extensive use of these pesticides was taking a heavy toll on all forms of wildlife. Rachael Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, was greeted with scorn by some, yet with alarm by many more. She was the first of many to raise public awareness of the damaging side-effects from widespread pesticide use. We move into the twenty-first century with both the government and numerous conservation groups that sprang up as a direct result of public concern, now working hard to reverse the damage done to wildlife.

The hedge has now assumed an important new role in the countryside, one that was previously not acknowledged, that of being the single greatest benefit to the survival and recovery of many animal and plant species, which have suffered from the loss of their habitat and food sources over the past fifty years.

In the coming chapters we will show how hedges can fulfil both their traditional roles and, when allied to field margins, offer an opportunity to restore the diversity and richness of animal and plant life that was once typical of rural England.

CHAPTER 2

The Choice of Trees and Shrubs

There are numerous reasons why people choose to plant hedges, so it is worth looking at their possible reasons, and the requirements that lead to such a decision:

To mark a boundary line between one’s own land and that of a neighbour.

To act as a screen to prevent other people looking on to one’s own property.

To form a screen around an unsightly building, a machinery or vehicle park, a rubbish disposal site, or any other reason falling into the category of ‘screening from view something that is unsightly’.

To provide both shelter and containment for livestock.

As a windbreak to protect high-value horticultural field-grown crops.

To divide one part of a garden from another, or to act as a windbreak for sensitive garden plants.

To form an attractive feature beside a road or leading up to a property.

To prevent soil erosion on light sandy soils, especially where vulnerable spring-sown crops are grown.

As a conservation hedge, to join up other existing hedges or woodland in order to provide a sheltered passage for the safe movement of wildlife across the countryside.

The decision to plant a hedge must be followed by an appraisal of all the considerations that can influence its physical make-up and mature appearance. W. J. Malden, writing in the RASE journal of 1899, provided an excellent list of important points to be considered. Some of these are not so pertinent to hedge planting today, but they are worth being aware of; thus Malden recommends that a hedge should:

be stock-proof reasonably quickly;

be uniform in its vigour of growth;

be easily kept within bounds;

present a compact front;

be strong enough to resist the efforts of animals to escape; this will be made easier if thorny species are chosen (hawthorn, wild rose, blackthorn);

choose plants suited to the soil type;

contain species that are frost hardy, or in coastal regions, able to withstand salt-laden winds;

Shelter animals from cold winds;

produce shoots close to the ground, so containing both small and large animals;

be resistant to fungal diseases (especially mildew on hawthorn, wild roses and crab);

not produce suckers that can spread into adjoining fields (blackthorn);

not be edibly attractive to the animals within the field, or to game sheltering in the hedge;

if it is intended to coppice or lay the hedge at a later date, contain species that will re-grow vigorously from a close-cut stump.

TREES AND SHRUBS SUITABLE FOR HEDGEROW USE

The following list provides a description of all the trees and shrubs suitable for hedgerow use. It is followed by a short list of those species that should not be chosen, and why they are to be avoided. The trees and shrubs are listed in order according to their scientific (Latin) names.

Field Maple(Acer campestre)

Field maple.

A small- to medium-sized tree, growing to 5–10m (16–33ft), most commonly found as a hedgerow shrub. It grows strongly in a wide range of soils and is very tolerant of dry, sandy conditions where it is at risk of becoming too dominant in a hedge. It responds well to trimming, although its shoots are somewhat brittle and tough. The field maple is a native species, commonly found growing in hedges throughout England.

The leaves have three to five unequal-sized, toothed lobes and are a dull green colour with a reddish stalk, which turns bright yellow-orange in the autumn.

It carries small, yellow-green flowers hidden within the developing foliage. The flowers develop into pairs of winged seeds (called ‘keys’), which stretch out horizontally to look like a bird in flight.

The young and older bark is sandy-brown in colour with flaky, longitudinal fissures that have a reddish edge when the bark is young.

Barberry(Berberis Vulgare)

Wild barberry.

The wild barberry is an uncommon hedgerow shrub, not a true native but introduced in ancient times. It forms a compact, small bush of not more than 3m (9–10ft), and is thus an ideal addition to a mixed species, or to a stock-proof hedge because of its dense spiny branches.

It has small oval to ovate, mid-green leaves that spring from spiny branch axils and are arranged in alternate clusters. The lower leaf surface is a downy whitish-green, and has a spiny edge.

The barberry carries hanging clusters of small yellow flowers that can turn to clusters of oblong bright red berries in the autumn.

The bark is a pale grey-brown, becoming darker with age.

Hornbeam(Carpinus betulus)

Hornbeam.

An attractive tree growing up to 20m (66ft) in height, with a rounded, bushy crown. It is native to Europe and south-east England. It is now more commonly planted as an alternative hedge choice to beech, holding its leaves well into winter. It responds well to trimming, but can be somewhat ‘ragged’ in its growth in early years.

The leaves are ovate to oblong, bright green turning bright yellow in autumn. There are prominent ribbed veins on the underside of the leaves, which have serrated edges.

It flowers in March with male and female catkins, the male (2.5cm/1in plus) being twice as long as the female (1.25cm/1/2in plus). Fruiting catkins mature into hanging clusters of thin seed bracts.

The bark is grey and smooth, and is vertically fluted or corrugated as it matures.

Hornbeam grows well on heavy to loamy, moist soils in central southern England, but does not like dry or frost-prone sites. It prefers neutral to acid soils.

Common Dogwood(Cornus sanguinea)

Dogwood.

A small, dense hedgerow shrub found in southern England, now a regular constituent of newly planted, mixed species hedges. It is less common in older hedges and thus an indicator of hedge age.

The leaves are dark, dull green, smooth-edged, oval and pointed. They are borne opposite to each other on purplish stems.

Clusters of cream to white flowers are carried on older wood in May to become bunches of white berries turning black in the autumn.

Its blood-red young shoot growth becomes greenish-brown as the bark ages.

Common dogwood has a vigorous and fibrous root system that prefers moist clay to loamy soil conditions. It grows well, but more slowly, on limestone soils, and is widely distributed in England. It will produce sucker growth if not controlled.

Hazel(Corrylus avellana)

Hazel.

A widely distributed, native hedgerow plant found throughout Britain. A plant with many uses, from gardeners’ beanpoles, thatchers’ spars to the hedge layer’s stakes and binders. Historically it had many other uses, including lathes for wattle-and-daub walls, basketwork, hurdle making and walking sticks.

Its round to oval leaves are heart-shaped, slightly pointed and have a serrated edge. They are softly hairy on both sides, being a paler green on the underside.

In late February, before its leaves appear, the male catkins shed their pollen on to adjacent little red female tassels, and if pollinated, form edible nut fruits in the autumn.

The bark is smooth and shiny, pale grey-brown to greenish brown, according to age, with horizontal lenticels (aeration pores) up the stems.

Hazel naturally forms a multi-stem bush that regenerates vigorously when coppiced; thus it is a very common and valuable hedgerow plant. It prefers a moisture-retentive, acid to neutral soil, but is nevertheless found growing on a wide range of soil types.

Hawthorn(Crataegus monogyna)

Hawthorn.

A native thorny shrub that can grow into a small, gnarled tree 10m (33ft) high with age, if provided with the freedom of a scrubland setting.

A very tough hardy plant that will colonize and survive on derelict land. It is found across a wide range of soil types. Centuries of use have proved it to be the finest plant for stock-proof hedges.

The hawthorn has shiny bright to dark green lobed leaves. The lobes vary in number and shape according to the many different strains, but there are usually three to five, and they can be finely serrated.

Its bark is greenish grey when young, becoming a dark grey, and cracking into browner fissures, with age. It bears many thorns on both shoots and branches.

Dense clusters of small white flowers appear in early May; these become bunches of blood-red, oval berries in the autumn, each berry containing one hard-shelled seed.

The Midland hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata), also native to Britain, bears flowers with two to three styles, and berries with two seeds. It can be distinguished from the common hawthorn by its leaves, which usually have only three lobes and are less serrated, giving them a broader look.

The hawthorn must be regarded as the ‘king’ of the hedgerow, as it meets every important requirement of the landowner. Its qualities as stock-proof barrier, shelterbelt and screen have meant that it has become synonymous with the English countryside.

Spindle Tree(Euonymus europaeus)

Spindle tree.

This tree is normally seen as a small, sparsely furnished bush, but it can grow into a small 5m (16ft) tree when situated in a woodland edge setting. It is found throughout England as a slow-growing native woodland and hedgerow shrub. It adapts well to a wide range of soils, having a very fibrous root system. It is unfortunate in being a well known host plant for the black bean aphid, so has not been popular with farmers for hedgerow planting until recently; but changes in agricultural cropping have reduced their concern for this disadvantage.

The leaves stem opposite one another, being oblong to oval in shape, pointed and spear-like, with finely serrated margins; the bright to dark green leaf colour turns to an attractive reddish yellow in the autumn.

The spindle bears small, yellow-green flowers in the leaf axils during May and June that become distinctive, bright pink berries in the autumn. Each berry contains four bright yellow seeds.

The stem is another distinctive feature, being angular in shape, with grey and green corky bark and rough-lined ridges along its length.

This is a shrub that should be planted, in small numbers, into both old and new hedges.

Common Beech(Fagus silvatica)

Common beech.

The beech has long been cultivated as a large, native timber tree growing to a height of 30m (100ft); yet it is equally well known for its qualities as a garden and country hedge. Beech responds well to chalk upland or moister limestone soils, but will not tolerate very dry or wet sites. It likes to grow in well drained soils where there is good summer rainfall. It is not to be recommended for use in a hedge where livestock are present as they will browse on its tender foliage.

The leaves are broad, shiny, smooth and ovate in shape, pointed with a wavy edge. The foliage is a bright green in early summer, becoming darker later in the summer before turning brown and yellow in the autumn. Beech retains its leaves throughout winter to be replaced by the fresh spring growth.

In May the beech bears clusters of small, pale green, mainly female flowers, with fewer clusters of male flowers hanging in long tassel bunches. The fruit (seed) is the familiar ‘mast’, a rough case containing two small, triangular nuts borne in the late autumn.

The bark is smooth, and grey to silver in colour.

Sea Buckthorn(Hippophae rhamnoides)