A Hedge Is a Home

Few things you can plant will repay you as generously as a native hedgerow. A well-chosen mix of British shrubs gives you a boundary, a windbreak and a privacy screen, but it also becomes a larder, a nursery and a winter shelter for an astonishing range of wildlife. Britain lost roughly half of its hedgerows during the twentieth century, so every new one genuinely matters.

The trick is to think of a hedge not as a single line of plants but as a miniature woodland edge. That is, in effect, what it is: a strip of shrubs and climbers with a sunny face on one side, a shaded face on the other, and a tangle of leaf litter at the base. Get the structure right and the species will arrive on their own.

Choosing Your Mix

Start with hawthorn, or quickthorn, which should make up roughly two-thirds of the planting. It is thorny, dense, tolerant of almost any soil and produces May blossom followed by a heavy crop of haws. Then add three or four companions for variety and a longer season of interest.

• Hawthorn — fragrant white flowers in May, red haws in autumn, and the best thorny nesting cover you can grow.
• Blackthorn — frothy white blossom in March before the leaves, followed by sloes. Wonderful for early bees, and it suckers freely to fill gaps.
• Field maple — our only native maple. Its leaves turn buttery gold in autumn, and the aphids it carries feed tits and hoverflies in summer.
• Hazel — yellow catkins in February, and nuts that mice, voles and squirrels will strip before you get a look in.
• Dog rose — pink and white summer flowers, scarlet hips in autumn, and a favourite of nesting whitethroats.
• Guelder rose — lacy white flowers and translucent red berries that hold well into winter.
• Holly — slow-growing but invaluable as evergreen shelter and a source of hard winter berries.

If you have room, tuck in crab apple, spindle, wild privet or elder. A honeysuckle or two rambling through the middle adds nectar for moths at dusk. Avoid laurel, rhododendron and leyland cypress; they are wildlife deserts.

Planting Day

Bare-root whips, sold in bundles, are far cheaper than potted plants and establish better. Order them for planting between November and March, when the ground is neither frozen nor waterlogged.

Clear a strip at least a metre wide of grass and weeds — this is the single most important thing you can do. Dig a trench, fork the base to break up any pan, and set the whips in two staggered rows about 40cm apart, with plants 30–45cm apart within each row. That works out at roughly five or six plants per metre of hedge.

Plant each whip to the same depth as the soil mark on its stem, firm it in properly with your heel, water it well, then mulch with 5–7cm of bark or compost, keeping the mulch clear of the stems. Fit spiral guards against rabbits and deer, and a cane to mark each plant. A weed-free hedge in its first two summers will grow twice as fast as a neglected one.

The First Three Years

In the spring after planting, cut every whip back hard to about 15cm above ground. It feels brutal, but it forces bushy growth from the base rather than a few spindly stems. For the next two years, water during dry spells and keep the strip weeded.

Let the hedge gain height steadily. Trim the sides lightly in late winter if you want a tidy line, but leave the top alone until the hedge reaches the height you want. By year three or four, you should have a dense, stock-proof barrier that birds will already be investigating.

Cutting for Wildlife, Not Just Neatness

The nesting season runs from March to August, and it is an offence to damage a nest in use, so keep the trimmer in the shed until late winter. Cut in late January or February, before the sap rises.

Resist the urge to trim every year. Instead, cut one side or one section annually on a three-year rotation, so there is always some older wood left standing. Cut to an A shape, broad at the base and narrower at the top, so light reaches the bottom and the hedge does not go bare and leggy.

Hawthorn and blackthorn flower and fruit on wood that is at least two years old, so an annual haircut means no blossom, no berries and no nesting sites. Leave one or two lengths to grow up to three metres as taller, thicker nesting cover. Leave leaf litter and any cut brash in a loose heap at the base: hedgehogs, shrews and bank voles will use it.

What You'll See

A mixed native hedge starts working almost immediately. In spring the blossom draws queen bumblebees, honeybees and solitary bees; in summer the foliage hosts moths, aphids and their predators; in autumn the berries feed redwings and fieldfares arriving from Scandinavia.

Expect dunnocks, robins and blackbirds nesting low down, blue tits and great tits in the middle, and song thrushes and yellowhammers where the hedge is tall and thick. Field maple and hazel bring in the small mammals, and holly gives everything somewhere to sit out a hard frost.

Plant it well, leave it mostly alone, and your hedgerow will quietly become the busiest stretch of your boundary.