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Why a native hedge earns its keep

A good boundary hedge does three jobs at once. It slows the wind across your plot, it gives birds somewhere to nest and roost, and it fills the hungry weeks of autumn and winter with berries and nuts. A fence does none of these things. On a smallholding, where every metre of ground has to work for its living, a mixed native hedge is one of the best investments you can make.

Native species also support far more insects than most ornamental shrubs, and those insects are what feed nestlings in spring. A hedge of hawthorn, blackthorn and hazel will bring in blue tits, dunnocks, blackbirds and robins within a couple of seasons, and once it starts fruiting you can expect redwings and fieldfares to drop in for the winter.

The three workhorses

You can plant dozens of species, but these three will do the heavy lifting on almost any soil.

• Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) — the backbone of the British hedge. Dense, thorny, quick to establish and happy in everything from heavy clay to thin chalk. White May blossom feeds early insects, and its red haws are the single best winter food for visiting thrushes. It responds well to cutting and will thicken up year after year.
• Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) — flowers even earlier than hawthorn, often on bare branches in March, and suckers freely to form a tight, impenetrable thicket. The sloes are bitter to us but invaluable to birds, and if you leave some unclipped you can pick a few for gin. It prefers heavier, damper ground than hawthorn.
• Hazel (Corylus avellana) — a softer, more open grower, so plant it in the mix rather than as the mainstay. Its catkins are a lifeline for early bees, and the nuts feed nuthatches, jays and wood mice. Hazel also coppices beautifully, giving you pea sticks and bean poles every few years.

If you want to widen the mix, add field maple, dog rose, guelder rose, holly or spindle in small numbers. Aim for hawthorn at roughly half the total, blackthorn at a quarter, and everything else making up the remainder.

Planning the line before you dig

Spacing is where most hedges go wrong. A single sparse row of whips will never be dense enough to shelter stock or hide a nest. For a proper boundary, plant a double staggered row: rows about 40cm apart, plants 40–45cm apart within each row, with the second row set opposite the gaps in the first. That works out at roughly five to six plants per metre.

Mark the line with two taut strings, then clear a strip about a metre wide of perennial weeds, especially couch and nettle. A metre-wide strip of bare, mulched ground also saves you endless strimming around the stems in the first years. Choose a spot that gets at least half a day of sun if you can, though hawthorn and hazel will cope with dappled shade.

Planting day

Bare-root whips are cheap, establish better than potted stock, and are available from November to March whenever the ground is not frozen or waterlogged. Order early — good native mixes sell out by midwinter.

• Fork over the strip and work in a few barrows of well-rotted compost or muck along the whole line rather than in individual holes.
• Plant so the old soil mark on the stem sits level with the ground. Too deep and the bark rots; too shallow and the roots dry out.
• Firm each plant in with your heel, then give the whole row a good soak if the ground is dry.
• Mulch with 5–8cm of bark chip or straw, keeping it clear of the stems.
• Fit a spiral guard to each whip where rabbits or deer are about, and a cane to mark the spot.

The first three years

Cut every whip back by about a third immediately after planting. It feels brutal, but it forces growth from the base and gives you a bushy hedge rather than a row of lollipops. Water well through the first two summers if the weather turns dry — a fortnightly soaking beats a daily sprinkle. Keep the strip clear of grass and weeds, which compete fiercely for moisture, and top up the mulch each spring.

By year three the plants should be knitting together. If any have failed, replace them in the next bare-root season rather than leaving gaps.

Cutting for birds, not for tidiness

The single most important rule is to avoid cutting between March and the end of August, when birds are nesting. Late winter is ideal, once the berries have been stripped and before the sap rises.

For a wildlife hedge, forget the annual flail. Cut a section on rotation instead — one length each year, or each side on alternate years — so there is always flowering and fruiting wood somewhere along the line. Trim to an A-shape, wider at the base than the top, so light reaches the bottom and the hedge stays dense all the way down. After a decade or so, consider laying a stretch by hand or coppicing a section down to the ground; both rejuvenate the hedge and give you years of fresh, thorny growth that birds adore.