OUR HEDGE FUND NEEDS TOPPING UP

Conservationist and hedgelayer Richard Negus reveals why our ancient hedgerows, created as boundaries and for the protection of crops, have become havens for wildlife - and why Labour's shortsighted cuts to farming grants have put them at dire risk

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HEDGEROWS are a construct of man. You cannot rewild a hedge because they were never wild. Archaeology reveals that by 2500BC, Britain’s earliest farmers were planting rows of shrubby thorn plants, then cutting and laying them to form livestock retaining enclosures.

The traces of these early hedges can still be seen today.

After harvest, when the summer sun bakes the stubbles dusty yellow, the land can reveal ancient secrets to a drone’s questing camera. Dark lines, the memories of hedgerows long gone, spread out like the veins on the back of an old man’s hand.

The more we Britons mastered agriculture, the more hedges proliferated.

They kept livestock in place and gifted tender crops some protection from the elements. Hedges acted as a visible boundary moreover, between parishes, estates, farms, fields and cottages.

When they grew too large and shaded out growing crops, they were coppiced to the ground and allowed to regrow.

If gaps appeared, enabling cattle or sheep to escape, they were filled by laid lengths.

Trees grew within the hedgerows, becoming mighty black poplars, cracked elms or curlicued oaks.

Many of the lonely trees we still see standing incongruously in fields of crops, remind us that a hedge once ran there.

The farmers of yesteryear were never driven by the notion that hedgerow planting and management provided habitat for wildlife. The hedge for them was an agricultural tool, no different to a plough or hoe.

The idea our forebears were somehow at one with nature seems a little romantic.

More mundanely, farmers twigged that the hedge was simply yet another example of a natural phenomena that they could harness and then master for their own ends.

Hedgerows are filled with hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, hazel, dogwood and spindle. All happily grow together in jumbled profusion, jostling for dominance.