The FlowerScapes corporate hedge, which replaced a rather dull stretch of Lonicera nitida
a few years ago, is really starting to bear fruit, quite literally.
Last year we had our first few Spindle berries, and this year they have
been joined by the translucent red fruits of Guelder-rose. Rose hips and
Blackberries have been a feature for a few years now, and hopefully
Sloes will be coming on line soon.
We’ve always been great advocates of native hedging. As well as providing an effective stock- and people-proof boundary, they provide shelter and nectar for a wide range of other species but also act as an interface between people and wildlife. One face of your garden hedge supplies you with food and colour, but the other face looks outward, displaying its wonders to passers-by. And if people want to do a little foraging as they pass, that’s fine with us.
Then,
of course, there’s the flora of the hedge bottom, that strange twilight
habitat that is neither woodland nor meadow, but shares features of
both. Sadly, though, recent studies suggest that this habitat is
suffering. Traditionally, the hedgerow was a last bastion against
intensive farming; even the most zealous tractor-driver couldn’t get too
close, so they remained relatively free from pesticides. True, many
were grubbed up to make larger fields; just after the end of World War
II there were over 800,000 kilometres of hedges in Britain, but by 1990
there were only 171,000 kilometres left, a loss of almost 80%. But of
the ones that survived, the very best could represent fragments of
remnant woodland going back thousands of years.
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| A Nottinghamshire agricultural field devoid of hedge boundaries |
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| Native hedge planting at one of BELECTRIC UK's solar farms |
Recent research by Prof Dave Goulson, of the University of Sussex, suggests that neonicotinoid pesticides, used as a seed treatment on a range of crops, are starting to appear in hedgerow flowers, sometimes at far higher levels than in the crop itself.
It appears that as much as 94% of the neonicotinoids applied to the crop end up in the soil, where they accumulate over the years and are washed out to the field margins. And the margins, of course, are where most of our pollinators will carry out their foraging.
A paper by researchers from the University of Plymouth found that, along hedgerows that formed the boundary between arable fields and roads, bumblebee abundance was twice as high on the road-facing side of the hedge compared with the crop-facing side. This is probably partly to do with herbicide effects in the field, but also down to the presence of road-verge grassland habitat adding further floral diversity.
So maybe now is the time to consider planting, not only a native hedge, but our road-verge seed mix too? It sounds like another habitat that urgently needs our help.
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It’s
always good to have studies to back up what we think we know, even if it
sometimes feels like stating the obvious. A recent study
by Sussex’s Dave Goulson and Lorna Blackmore of the University of
Sterling, demonstrated that plots sown with a ‘wildflower’ seed mix had 5
times more flowers, 50 times more bumblebees and 13 times more
hoverflies compared to paired control plots. The seed mix used in this
study was a generic native wildflower mix, mainly perennials with a
handful of cornfield annuals. Our UK Native Wildflower Mix or indeed our Perennial Bee Mix would give a similar effect.
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