Close to the hedge
And adventure in blackthorn, hawthorn and other thorns
To assess the gulf between townies and the country life, you could do worse than consider my phone call from Steve. I was trimming a hedge with a pair of secateurs, up to my armpits in blackthorns, when the mobile phone vibrated in my pocket. “Yo!” said Steve, Soho-based adept of nightclubs and cocktail bars. “Where are you?”
Not wishing to reveal the full truth, I said only: “I’m in a field.”
He seemed surprised. Then an idea struck him, based on his frequent attendance at raves. “You chillin’?”
It seemed best to confirm this, and move the conversation forward. Because if I’d told him the truth, Steve would have wondered why I, a Londoner like him, was trimming a hedge outside Taunton.
To explain, I should mention a trip some years earlier, on a train travelling north from the capital. I looked out of the window and noticed that Northamptonshire had turned into Hyde Park: mile after mile of grassy turf, the odd tree – and no hedges. By peculiar coincidence, I then picked up a newspaper and found myself reading about the destruction of hedgerows across Britain. The thrust of the article, as I hazily recall it, was that wicked farmers – not content with killing wildlife by ploughing and spraying fields – were pulling up hedges (or “tight-knit ecosystems”) and replacing them with fences.
Unable to remedy this outrage myself, in urban north London, I mentioned the matter with some urgency to my in-laws in rural Somerset. We must create a new hedge, I told Jack and Sue, and the sooner the better.
I outlined a vision of a countryside criss-crossed once again with hedges, as it had been for centuries until the advent of intensive farming. I explained that a new hedge would provide food and shelter for (among other things) fieldfares, voles, starlings, wasps, blackbirds, mice, spiders, stoats, rabbits and butterflies. As a bonus, it would also create a valuable windbreak – eliminating the admittedly slim possibility that their garden might one day become a dustbowl to rival the American Midwest.
I knew the idea would appeal because Jack and Sue had already created their own woodland, on previously bare territory beside the stream at the end of their garden. After 15 years, this wood looked as if it had been there forever. Now they were buying a strip of land from the neighbouring farm to create a meadow. What better than a new hedge to divide this from the field beyond?
They listened politely and a few weeks later Jack phoned to say they intended to do as I suggested. What’s more, he added, an organisation called the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) had recommended the ideal assortment of native plants and the local authority was providing £50 towards the new hedge. All we had to do was dig in the plants, worth a total of £444, when they arrived.
I confirmed that this would be a great pleasure and agreed a date for my next visit. But when the day came, I couldn’t help noticing that the weather had take a turn for the worse. A fire was blazing in the sitting room and on TV there was a fairly decent movie showing. With one hand on my forehead – and an eye on the telly – I coughed and said I wasn’t feeling altogether tip-top. Jack took this in good spirit, zipping up his coat, pulling on a pair of wellingtons and marching outside with the fortitude of Captain Scott’s colleague Oates – the chap who said he “may be some time” and never came back.
Jack did come back, but not till after dark. He was soaked to the skin and looked terribly hungry, though not the least bit reproachful despite having planted a hedge 160 metres long and a metre wide. (With some help, admittedly, from a pair of similarly drenched contractors, Derek and Stephen, who’d come along expecting only to knock up a fence.) Following FWAG’s advice, they’d planted: 500 hawthorn whips, 128 blackthorn, 100 hazel, 32 field maple, 32 dogwood, 26 buckthorn, 26 spindle and 13 holly. At 20-foot intervals, they’d also planted young oaks and ash, to tower over the hedge in years to come.
On a subsequent visit, a few months later – the weather having picked up – I stepped outside to inspect their work. I felt a surge of pride about my hedge – as I still thought of it then – but also a fair measure of guilt about leaving Jack to do most of the work. To repay him, I vowed to help as much as possible by trimming the hedge as it grew to full size. And that’s more or less what I’ve done. Now, precisely five years after it was planted, the hedge has been trimmed mechanically for the first time – but only after the berries that are so valuable to wildlife have been eaten or fallen off.
I realise that our project is by no means unique. Many people across the country have shared my somewhat sentimental vision, reviving hedges they found on old maps, or creating entirely new ones. Nor are farmers altogether to be blamed, because many have worked hard to reverse the depredations of the past. It’s too early to be chillin’, because hedges are still disappearing and there’s much still to do. But thanks to Jack and Sue and others like them, the rate of destruction is slower than it was.
914 words. First published 15 November 03. © The Financial Times
15 September 03