05 Feb 2024: Dead hedge

At the previous meeting on the 28th January, we coppiced some of the hazel bushes to reduce excess crowding and shading of the woodland floor, to encourage more growth of woodland flowers such as bluebells, wood anemones, celandines, wild arum, etc. Today we used some of the cut hazel branches and twigs to build a “dead hedge”. This used the stouter hazel poles, cut to length and sharpened at one end, hammered into the ground as uprights to form an enclosure about three metres long by 0.5 metres wide.

We strengthened this by weaving thinner branches horizontally in and out of the poles. We then started filling the centre of the structure with “brash” (unwanted twiggy bits cut from the sides and ends of the bigger branches) to provide a hiding place for small mammals, insects, etc.

• https://www.rspb.org.uk/helping-nature/what-you-can-do/activities/build-a-dead-hedge-for-wildlife
• https://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/woodland-activities/dead-hedging-wildlife-friendly-and-people-guiding/

If instead you're thinking of live hedges, if all the hedges in England were straightened out and lined up end-to-end, they would stretch nearly ten times around the Earth (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68132688)

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