There's more than one way to lay a hedge

Most people involved in practical conservation work will recognise the above statement as true. In fact, when many of us completed our training we were often told by those teaching us that there were at least two ways of doing most things – “my way, or the wrong way”!

The ancient craft of hedgelaying, however, is a little more complex than that. The National Hedgelaying Society (NHLS) states that there are over 30 styles of hedgelaying recorded in the UK, with each one developing over many years based on the climate, farming practices and vegetation types of a region.

Hedgelaying professionals and aficionados recently gathered in Wallingford, Oxfordshire for the NHLS Annual Championship (as featured on BBC Countryfile on 2 January 2023) where the eight most common regional styles were showcased, as highly skilled professionals vied to be crowned champion of their class.

Stern-faced, beady-eyed judges patrol the hedgerows awarding marks for stockproof-ness, straightness and spacing of stakes and binders (often a product of coppicing, another ancient countryside craft), angle of cuts, trueness to regional style and much more besides.

Whether you’re taking on a Midlands, Lancs & Westmorland, or Dorset style hedge, it’s a hard fought battle!

Missing from the NHLS style guide however, is conservation hedgelaying – a firm BBOWT favourite.

In its quest to create a complete barrier to livestock, to be constructed in a set way and to match a certain style, traditional hedgelaying can require a lot of material to be cut out of the hedge.

While in time both the hedge and the wildlife that call it home will still undoubtedly benefit, the initial change can be an abrupt and sometimes drastic one.

Conservation hedgelaying however isn’t so concerned with controlling livestock or the appearance of the finished hedge to the human eye, and aims to retain as much material as possible during the laying process.

This creates a dense, bushy, sheltered habitat for wildlife from day one. As these hedges are wide and tangly, they are often self-supporting, reducing the need for stakes and binders thus presenting a significant time and potentially cost saving too.

Winter 2022/23 has seen two Oxfordshire reserves receive significant attention to their hedgerows, splitting the conservation style yet further, into two types – hand laying and mechanical laying.

Asham Meads, a species-rich hay meadow site on the Oxon/Bucks border, has a profusion of sprawling, gnarly blackthorn hedges, many of which are getting old, leggy and less valuable for wildlife.

With both brown and black hairstreak recorded on site, which rely on blackthorn as their larval foodplant, managing the hedgerows is all the more pertinent.

Given the age and state of the hedge selected for laying this winter and the scale of the work required, a contractor was appointed to bring in the big guns – two fearless chainsaw operatives and a man with a rather large digger!

Following some siding up (the hedge had got so tall that it had then collapsed into the meadow, effectively doubling its width and eating into the valuable grassland) the chainsaw operators set to work, crawling into the base of the hedge and making the laying cuts in each stem, without actually laying anything down.

That complete and with chainsaw operatives safely withdrawn, the digger comes along and pushes everything over. Hey presto – 165m of hedge laid in a day!

It is an undeniably heavy handed approach that would no doubt raise a few eyebrows in conservation and hedgelaying circles alike, and by no means is it a replacement for the care and skill involved in traditional hedgelaying, but where the hedgerows are well beyond the billhook, it provides a good way to create a laid hedge without having to resort to coppicing, waiting 10 years and starting again!

We are looking forward to seeing how the hedge does this summer.

Elsewhere, at Wells Farm in Little Milton, the Oxfordshire Field Team have been busy with a hedgelaying project of their own, tackling a mixed-species hedge the laying of which was a few years overdue!

Closer to traditional hedgelaying, passers-by would have witnessed both the roar of chainsaws and the glint of axes in the winter sun as the team employed both power and hand tools to complete the job.

The end result is a pleasingly dense hedgerow which will no doubt be a haven for a range of wildlife throughout the year. And who knows, with its smart appearance, perhaps it will even bring at least half a smile to the face of any passing NHLS judge!

A huge thanks to the Oxfordshire Field Team for all their efforts in completing this work, just one of the many aspects of hedgerow management they have been pivotal in over the years, making a significant contribution to improving biodiversity on this former arable farmland reserve.

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