Hedgerows
A little about hedgerows from The Wildlife Trusts:
Criss-crossing the countryside, hedgerows – long rows of bushes, often with trees rising among them – can be seen dividing up our farmland and landscapes. They may be planted or they may be the remnants of ancient wooded areas, but they are mainly used as barriers to prevent livestock from escaping from the fields or to form boundaries between parishes.
Two thirds of England has been continuously hedged for over a thousand years, so many of our older hedgerows are a window into our past. They can range in date from medieval boundaries to the results of the 19th century Enclosures Act when many of the open fields and commons were divided up into smaller pockets. These older hedgerows support an amazing diversity of plants and animals and often have archaeological important old banks and ditches associated with them.
In the UK, there are currently about 450,000 km of hedgerow left. Of this, about 190,000 km are thought to be ancient or species-rich. These hedges are mainly found in southern England and southern Wales, and are much scarcer in Scotland.
With nectar-rich blossom in the spring, insects buzzing in the dense thickets in summer and red berries abound in autumn, hedgerows provide wildlife with a rich larder. In fact, they are so good for wildlife that 130 UK BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan) priority species are associated with them.
Hedgerows are often a mix of shrub and tree species such as hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, ash and oak, interwoven with climbers like traveller’s-joy and honeysuckle. Banks and ditches fill with flowers like hedge bedstraw and red campion, and butterflies, such as the rare black and brown hairstreaks, purple emperor and pearl-bordered fritillary, use them for nectar or to lay their eggs.
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Hedges need to be hogged.
Glorious bocage…
We have dedicated all our boundaries to planting native wildflowers and trees, such as willow, which will thrive in the salty air and frequent high winds which assault our small patch of land. We have been rewarded by seeing a few more insects and birds than we saw last year; a year following a winter so wet that some months had four times the usual rainfall, drowning insects and their larvæ and forcing insectivorous birds and their predators to move elsewhere.
We are still seeing almost no insects. Flies? We are surrounded by dairy and beef farms (traditional, grass-raised, in fields edged with hedgerows) and should be smothered in them throughout the summer. We had fewer than two dozen flies in the house this year, and none of the huge horseflies usually associated with cattle and other large mammals. The cattle themselves have seemed singularly unbothered by flies for the last few years. Time was when a herd would have a cloud of them buzzing around.
Hedgerows are vital, but they aren’t enough. If pesticides are sprayed indiscriminately, it is inevitable that all insects will be killed. This is why I’m hoping for GM crops which will, like some so-called ‘weeds’, have systemic insecticides which target only those insects which eat the seeds, and leave pollinators alone. No further need for pesticide spraying, leaving verges and hedgerows as true refuges.