Managing Hedgerows

Before I get seriously reprimanded for going off thread think the initial comment although saying Council was almost certainly not Council as it looked on a farm and was either a contractor or farmers tractor and trimmer.

Suppose to your annoyance Ian I am not changing my mind about hedge trimming having trimmed farm hedges with hand equipment,chain saws and tractors for fifty years I think that experience tells me what is best for hedge and when to do the trim depending on land conditions.Absolutely no good trying to trim a hedge and either getting tractor stuck in mud or making ruts a foot deep.

If anyone thought the RSPB would take notice of anything I say then they are seriously fooling themselves and if you think you need to tell farmers they need to manage about 3 large Hawthorns in field corners or they may develop into woods then that would not happen to any that I know and if I told them that they would say I was patronising.

Better not say any more on this thread or it will be definitely be said it was a Council thread  and I am off topic even though obviously hedges are more farmer maintained than Council maintained by a serious majority,thank you.    

As this hedge was planted under the 'control' of the council and maintained on the 'council side' by the council contractors it was a planted as a dividing hedge to separate farm land from council owned land and the guy that cuts the hedge in the autumn has probably by this time of the year made the last cut of the football pitches and byways

Sooty, i'll be honest I can't quite make out some of the points you are trying to make in that last post but am I right in thinking that you now accept that other ways of managing hedges may be better for wildlife than your favoured approach and that we do actually already provide the advice that you said we didn't??? I'm glad we got that sorted!

Of course a corner of a farmed field isn't going to turn into a whole woodland immediately, you miss the point. If you don't cut a hawthorn shrub back and let it grow and grow, as you suggested, you end up with a tree, trees grow tall (hawthorn can reach 10m!) and create shade, not good for your crops, and have very little cover at ground level which is a major benefit of leaving tricky areas as scrub in the first place. However, if the rest of that field were to be left uncultivated and wasn't grazed then over time that small corner would spread out into scrub and then finally into woodland (it's the process of succession, woodland being the climax community).

I can think of two examples on my doostep where this is happening, one intentionally at Sugley woods where farmed land was bought for conservation and has mostly been left to change through natural succession, apart from some selective tree planting, into woodland over time now that farming operations no longer occur. The other site is private land that is no longer farmed, the surrounding hedgerows have seeded the growth of scrub amongst the rough grass and some of the in-field scrub growth is now linking with the hedgerows, well on it's way to forming woodland.

While the hedge in the first point may have been the responsibility of the local council are not most field and roadside hedges maintained by farmers or their contractors ?

Good question, I don't know what the split is between farm managed hedges and local authority managed hedges! Given the massive amount of area farming takes up in the UK you would probably be right in saying that there are more hedges under farm management. However local authorities do manage a considerable amount. Interesting one, i'll have to look into that!

Every year farmers seem to get criticised for various aspects of hedge trimming so I will try and give some reasons why what happens is not always as simple as it seems.

When farming we were as are probably most farmers partly in the hands of the contractor who had probably got hundreds of miles of hedges to cut so obviously he had to spread that workload over the period of something like 1st of August to the following end of February.He managed this by starting on the farms with the wetter land then in winter doing the farms with drier land and always on all these farms he would leave the roadside hedges which he then did when the land was at its wettest also of course to add to his problems he had to trim relatively early any fields that were going to be sown with Autumn sown crops.

Lots of us on various schemes and to help birds with berries decided on the solution of cutting half of our fields hedges one year and the other half the next year but although some people think that the hedge does not suffer from this management I suggest that the reason approximately(as I understand and certainly in this area)50% of hedges are not in schemes claiming money is that they consider it more important than the money to trim each year,surely there can be no other reason why farmers would turn down the chance to collect money.Certainly in our case of cutting hedge every second year we only thought it worthwhile for the berries for the birds and the small amount of money was nothing to do with it.

Farmers I think find it strange how scientists who have never managed a farm hedge seem to think they know everything about it and any mistake they make about hedges costs them nothing whereas any mistake the farmer makes regarding his hedge certainly costs him money so he is always going to try and avoid that.

If scientists,bird organisations and general public want those who trim hedges every year to go bi-annual then I think someone will have to make it worth there while by paying more than is on offer now as it is obviously not tempting enough. 

Well put sooty,it reminds me of my farming days, I hads only been workingon the farm for about a year, when my boss asked if Iknew how to lay hedges, yes of course I can so he said I could start the ten acre field after milking was finished, I set of armed with saws hedge slashers, after a couple of hours my boss came to have a look, he went beserck Idid not know you only cut half way through the trunks then push them down, I was just cutting through and laying down and tying with wire, but over the years I got better at it.

Birdie, Your hedge sounds great for wildlife. I have one border of my garden to enclose and you have given some good ideas - as has IanH in a previous post.

Seaman, I agree with your comment. All the hedges round here are maintained by farms / land owners ( some not very well I have to say ) or private households. The Local Authority cuts the verges x 2 over the growing period.

In my nearest town the Parks Dept of the Local Authority tend to focus on seasonal and annual planting areas. There are some roadside plantings of shrubs and trees such as Rosa Rugosa, Cotoneaster and Cherry varieties and I think the Rosacaes were pruned back in October. Not sure if there are many hedges within the parks.

The situation may well be different in larger towns and cities.