Healthy Hedgerows on Your Land

Healthy hedgerows benefit farmers, provide life support for wildlife and have many public and environmental benefits. You can manage your hedgerows to increase farm profitability, save money, reduce risks, help the environment, and generate income.

You may value your hedgerows for crop protection and pollination, as a stock barrier, a livestock shelter, a wildlife haven, a source of income or as a landscape feature. Keeping hedges healthy maximises all these benefits and ensures they thrive. Of course, the way you manage your hedgerows will reflect what you use them for. All hedgerows need to be managed on a cycle if they’re to be viable in the long-term, but there’s plenty of flexibility in this cycle for your hedgerows to suit your farm and your needs.

We know that the cost of hedgerow maintenance can be a burden, especially where a hedgerow isn’t fulfilling its economic potential. But it’s easy to underestimate the role they play on your farm: healthy hedgerows offer a better chance at generating a financial return. Luckily, sometimes the best action for the hedge, is also the most cost effective.

A useful, profitable hedge stands the best chance of surviving in the long term.

Why are we worried about hedgerows? Hedgerows are one of Ireland’s most widespread and valuable habitats, with great cultural and historical value. But their future can’t be taken for granted. Thousands of miles of hedgerows were destroyed in the last century, making the ones that remain all the more valuable. Thankfully, the rate of direct removal has drastically reduced in recent years, and it is encouraging to see that new hedges are going back in. However, many hedges are still at risk through the way they’re managed.

Hedgerows need management or they turn into a line of trees but managing them requires working with their natural lifecycle. It is impossible to keep a hedgerow at the same point in its lifecycle indefinitely without the structure declining. We see this when hedges are trimmed to the same level year after year; they lose stems, lose vegetation near the base, and become gappy. If this persists, the gaps get larger as the structure fails and we risk losing them altogether.

Why Hedgerows?

As well as their value to wildlife, hedges deliver benefits that can save you money and increase the profitability of your farm. These include some of the following:

Crops

• Wind damage - hedgerows can provide a wind break and increase crop yields by reducing the damage caused by cold, strong winds such as:
  • Lodging, which makes crops much more difficult to harvest and dramatically reduces yield;
  • premature flower and fruit shedding;
  • shoot damage;
  • chilling injuries.
• Reduced pesticide use - hedgerows increase populations of predator and parasitic species which are the natural enemies of crop pests. Farmland birds and predatory invertebrates such as spiders, beetles and wasps all feed on, and therefore limit, pest species.
• Pollinators - hedgerows help support diverse pollinators, essential for crop pollination and crop yields. They provide food for pollinators throughout the year when crops aren’t in flower, as well as places to nest.

Soil

Hedgerows reduce soil erosion by: 

• reducing surface wind speeds;
• acting as a barrier to water runoff;
• their roots which help to stabilise the soil surface.

Tree and shrub roots grow deeper than crops to access nutrients deeper in the soil profile. This process cycles nutrients into the topsoil.

Shelter creates warmer soils, extending the growing season.

Livestock

• Shelter - livestock without shelter have a higher mortality and require more food. Shelter increases lamb survival rates, reducing the effect of wind chill and hypothermia.
• Shade - in the summer months, heat stress reduces milk yield in dairy herds and affects fertility, growth rates and disease resistance.
• Diet diversity - supplementary feeding on native hedgerow plants can increase livestock gut microbial diversity, help immune function, and improve feed conversion efficiency.
• Biosecurity - thick, stock-proof hedges can create barriers to the spread of disease such as bovine TB by reducing animal-to-animal contact between farms.
• Parasitic load - livestock may self-medicate by browsing on common species found in hedgerows. Some leaves have anti-parasitic properties, rough surfaces that act as a rasping plug or can cause a purging response.

Water & flood control

• Water infiltration - plant roots help soils absorb water faster. This enables the soil to act like a sponge soaking up flood water, rather than allowing it to run off the surface. 

  The soil under a hedge stores more water, and stores it faster preventing and delaying its movement downslope.

• Water uptake - trees and shrubs remove water from soils by absorbing and transpiring it.
• Reducing silt in waterways - silted waterways are more prone to flooding. Much of the silt in our waterways is field runoff. Hedges and hedgerow trees help prevent soil erosion and stop sediment reaching our streams and rivers.
• Slowing flood water - by slowing water flows, trees reduce the impact of flooding, allowing more time for soil infiltration, and time to respond to flood warnings.

Our environment

• Carbon storage - hedgerows store carbon above and below ground, so can help us in our fight against climate change.
• Pollution - hedgerows reduce the amount of fertilisers, pesticides and sediment that reach watercourses. They act as a physical barrier, increasing infiltration to the soil, and recycle nutrients through the trees, shrubs and other plants. They also improve air quality by capturing pollution particles. 

Other

• Sustainable wood fuel - hedges and hedgerow trees can provide sustainable wood fuel, without losing land from production. This can be used or sold as fuel or timber.

Pollarding, a traditional tree management technique, can provide both wood fuel and animal fodder.

• Privacy - hedgerows can act as a screen and protect privacy, shielding farm assets and buildings from public sight.
• Sense of place - hedgerows are a defining feature of the countryside, with deep and significant cultural and historical importance. They tell the story of farming traditions over many centuries and add to regional distinctiveness. They make farms more attractive which may help with farm diversification projects.
• Wildlife - hedgerows provide a home, food, shelter and corridors to travel for wildlife. Given the extent of agricultural land on the island of Ireland, the importance of hedgerows for wildlife cannot be overstated.

Adapted from a technical report by People’s Trust for Endangered Species. Reproduced here with kind permission.