Take Stock Before You Take the Saw Out

A neglected hedgerow is rarely a dead one. More often it is a hedgerow nobody has had a plan for: flailed to the same height every few years, gappy where stock have rubbed through, colonised by elder and sycamore, and holding on to a handful of genuinely good stems. The instinct on a country estate is to tidy it, or to grub it out and replant. Both are expensive mistakes if you have not assessed it first.

Walk the whole length twice. Visit in winter, when structure, gaps and stem quality are visible, then again in late spring or early summer to record ground flora and nesting interest. Take the estate plans, tithe maps and the first edition Ordnance Survey sheet with you; old hedge lines often survive as faint banks and ridge-and-furrow patterns long after the woody growth has thinned. Note in a notebook or on a simple map: dominant species, height, average gap length, presence of a ditch or bank, dead or dying trees, rabbit and deer pressure, and any invasive species. That record becomes your management plan for the next decade.

Reading Gaps: Why They Happened and What to Do

Gaps are diagnosis as much as disfigurement. Treating a symptom without understanding the cause simply buys you another gap in five years. Look for the likely reason first:

• Stock damage — rubbed, broken stems near gateways and along the inside of a field boundary; needs fencing or a stock-proof barrier before replanting.
• Shade — nothing grows under a dense canopy of mature sycamore or ash; thin the trees before you plant beneath them.
• Drainage and ditches — hedges on wet clay often sit on a bank beside a ditch; if the ditch is silted, the hedge roots drown. Clear the ditch first, working outside the nesting season.
• Rabbits and deer — cleanly bitten stems at 30–60cm, or browsed regrowth on the line.
• Repeated hard flailing — a thin, leggy hedge with a dense knuckle at cutting height and little growth below it.

To gap up, plant whips of local provenance — hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, field maple, dog rose, guelder rose, crab apple, spindle — at 45–60cm, in a double staggered row 30–40cm apart, between November and March when the ground is workable and not frozen. Fit a 1.2m spiral guard to each whip, mulch to suppress grass, and protect the section with temporary netting or electric fencing for at least three seasons. Where a gap exceeds roughly five metres, consider a small copse of feathered trees rather than a thin line of whips, which will never knit into a hedge. Where the gap is a genuine, well-used gateway, leave it and formalise it.

Invasive and Undesirable Species

Some plants tell you the hedge has been losing the argument for years. Bramble and ivy dominance in a shaded hedge is a symptom of poor light, not a problem in itself; the answer is thinning above, not spraying below. The genuine troublemakers are different:

• Japanese knotweed — never flail it, never move soil from the area, and take specialist advice; it is a controlled waste if excavated and spread by the smallest fragment.
• Himalayan balsam — pull or strim before seed set in June or July, and repeat for three or four years to exhaust the seedbank.
• Cherry laurel and rhododendron — cut, then treat the stump with an approved herbicide; expect a flush of seedlings for several seasons.
• Sycamore and elder — thin rather than clear, keeping the eventual aim of restoring light at the base of the hedge.

Assessing Whether a Hedge Will Lay

Laying is the single best treatment for a hedge with potential, but it is not right for every hedge. Judge the material stem by stem. Ideally you want live, upright stems of roughly 3–10cm diameter at the base, a hedge at least 1.5m tall, and enough stems per metre to weave without leaving holes. A hedge with a good mixed base and no more than a few mature trees in the line will lay well and thicken at the base for decades.

Warning signs are equally useful. Very large stems, a solid knuckle of old cuts at one height, and a hollow base mean the hedge has been flailed too hard for too long. Do not attempt to lay a five-metre hedge of 40cm-diameter stems in a single winter; it will look brutal and may not recover. Instead work in sections over two or three seasons, or coppice a proportion each year and lay the regrowth. Traditional laying styles — Midland Bullock, Welsh Border, Devon — suit different local materials, but the principle is the same: cut part-way through, bend downhill, stake and bind with hazel or willow. Work between October and March, avoiding frost and waterlogged ground.

Timing, Rules and a Rotational Plan

Countryside hedgerows in England and Wales are protected by the Hedgerow Regulations 1997; before removing one, you must notify the local planning authority, and unauthorised removal carries significant penalties. Cutting is best done between September and February, and ideally in late January or February so that berries and hips are left for birds over the hardest weeks. Avoid March to August entirely — nests in use are protected — and note that agri-environment and woodland scheme rules usually require you to leave a buffer strip alongside the hedge, with no fertiliser or spray.

Rather than cutting the whole estate every year, divide hedgerows into three groups and cut each on a three-year rotation, leaving one group uncut each winter for fruit and cover. Trim to an A-shaped profile, wider at the base than the top, so light reaches the bottom of the hedge. Keep cutting height above the old knuckle, and keep some sections on a longer rotation to encourage young blackthorn for brown hairstreak butterflies.

Aftercare, Hedgerow Trees and Wildlife Corridors

In the first year after laying, check stakes and binders after gales, and let regrowth reach 1.2–1.5m before any trimming. Keep livestock out with temporary fencing and watch for rabbit damage to new growth. Mark and protect hedgerow trees — oak, field maple, hornbeam, and ash where dieback is not already present — at roughly one every 50–100m, choosing straight, well-formed saplings and clearing competition around them.

Then think beyond the single hedge. A restored hedgerow is only as valuable as what it connects: field corners, shelter belts, woodland edges, ponds and rough grass margins. Link them where you can, so bats, dormice, birds and pollinating insects have continuous corridors rather than isolated fragments. Leave brash and deadwood in modest piles at the field edge, and shelter from prevailing winds will improve grazing and lambing conditions. Finally, write it down: which hedge was laid, which cut, which gapped up, and when. Estate hedgerows are usually a twenty-year project, and the next person to pick up the saw deserves to know where you got to.