Go stick it!

One of the things we've been asking people to do this autumn and winter as part of our Nature on Your Doorstep campaign is make dead hedges. In other words, to gather any sticks, branches and prunings of trees and shrubs and pile them up in any way you want instead of burning them or putting them in the green bin.

I'll be revealing my new dead hedge in a couple of weeks' time.

But I thought I'd share with you what is effectively some dead hedges I saw in a local park to me recently (the National Trust's Sheffield Park).

It's a simple as that - just laying lots of sticks in a row. I think it looks really effective.

And what you can immediately see is that a dead hedge is anything but dead. It is so badly named! For a start the sticks have become covered in moss - this is a three dimensional sticky moss garden.

But as I walked past this dead hedge out popped this:

And you know how much I love Robins!

He/she would only have been in there either because of the cover and protection the dead hedge provides, or most probably because it was finding all sorts of creepy-crawlies in there to eat.

A dead hedge is also a way of storing, at least for the medium term, lots of carbon. Wood, as in sticks and branches, are basically big lumps of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, all of which are complex molecules of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. And all that carbon to make those sticks and branches didn't come out of the soil  - it came out of the air. If you grow plants and if you pile up your sticks that result from them, you are supporting the sucking out of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (Scientists might baulk at how I express it, but the basic concept is accurate!).

I'm such a fan of sticks and everything they do that I think we should treasure them in the garden. They are materials for the creative to be let loose on.

So I was delighted to see what someone artistic had done with them at Sheffield Park. I love this:

And I LOVE this even more:

Now you might say that they aren't exactly structures that are doing wonders for nature. But, you know what? They celebrate the humble stick, they make us think about them in a new light. And that final photo of a moon gate? Well, I can imagine that Robin finding a wonderful nesting site in among the tangle of branches.

And I hope it inspires you to go and do something sticky, too.