What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge
knowablemagazine.org
knowablemagazine.org
As a wildlife photographer I probably take 75% of my photos of birds in hedges. I don’t have to camp out for hours - I just walk along the hedgerows aimlessly.
Also, if other countries don’t have hedges, what happens to the grotty pornography magazines that dwell natively in the hedgerows? Are they in some sort of meta-state of quasi-existence? A theoretical hedgerow porn mag?
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_inexplicably_ubiquit...
In other countries porn mags tend to nest in the woods. In japan i understand the endemic porn mags generally live under bridges, more rarely in small bushes.
It is known.
https://www.google.com/search?q=there+is+porn+in+the+woods&i...
On moorland, dry stone walling is the usual delimiter, see Bodmin (Cornwall), Dartmoor Exmoor, and heading up north - The Peaks in Derbyshire(ish), the Yorkshire Moors, etc and most of Cumbria and Northumberland.
One of the odd regions out is the New Forest (laid out about 1000 years back for King William I) This region famously isn't enclosed and is also mostly no longer forest too.
I've only covered England but Wales, Scotland and Ireland have their own varieties of land demarcation, mostly involving hedges of some sort unless moorland in which case stone is generally indicated in exposed areas but all are largely familiar to each other.
The article goes on about maintenance. Farmers fit a a device called a flail to the back of their tractors and trim the hedgerows after birds have fledged. They trundle along at around a slow walking pace. It can get a bit dicey driving in a lane in mid to late spring time because the overgrown hedges block your oncoming view.
Anyways, glad it's about plants. Happy Thanksgiving, all!
confused me, what with there being nothing about foreign agents being used to manipulate the media, but then I realized it was about vegetative matter. :)
Manipulating vegetative matter into homogeneous shapes. Not entirely dissimilar then?
On topic... While we still have a lot, we have also lost a lot of our hedgerows to commercial farming practices. So Britain aren't exactly great examples either. These are supposedly insect habitats - insects which have all but vanished in recent years which will no doubt have a large ecological impact.
"Buy cheap buy twice" as the saying goes.
Sorry, the pandemic has made me be more on the internet and HN is only 30 to 60 articles long.
(who wouldn't want to, right?)
Popup #2: Stay In The Know!
(well I certainly do, right?)
Popup #3: Explore More
(wait, what was I doing here again?)
<closes tab>
It is great for animals and birds, probably good for farmers, but suck for people.
I live in South England, in Hampshire, in the South Downs, which is full of undulated countryside full of fields with hedges.
It is pretty. But also I never see any of it as the massive overgrown hedges blocks all views. And make it unnecessarily dark. I might as well live in a city or suburbia. Apart from in the winters when the leaves are gone it is bearable.
I have lived in other countries with none to minor fences by paths and roads. And I have also lived further north in England, in the Peak District, which use more stone/rock walls which are not that high. A drive or even better a bike ride is then wonderful. And not dangerous as you can can see when a car comes the other way round a sharp corner.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Hedge-India-Quest-Wonders/dp/...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/colonial-india-british...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Rackham
“Social Forestry Network”
Hedges and Hedgerows Trees in Britain: A Thousand Years of Agroforestry
I find this article a bit odd in it's approach (although supportive of more hedgerow area) and in inquiry of where the concept of hedgerows came from.
For farmers with livestock 'hedge-laying' is something that needs doing every 50 years or so (if well maintained) to ensure the lower sections are animal proof. Take a look at the British National HedgeLaying Society (NHLS) which holds national championships. Our local farming shows often hold competitions too (a neat way to get some of our hedges done for free!):
Some areas though, where farming conditions are pefect, look much more like the USA Mid-west where all you can see are large areas of crops and border hedges.
Either way, they can still provide valuable protection, nesting and food for insects, birds and small animals.
Roughly here https://goo.gl/maps/ckkBszjTHqkqL25Z8
I know that some places are starting to incentivise planting them again, because bare fields let wind race and as soon as it rains a bit hard half the field ends on the road blocking it.
In almost all farms, there are hedges and they simply have gates or gaps in them to move between fields so they shouldn't be so inconvenient that the entire hedge needs to be removed.
I was reading that the UK might only have 30 harvests left before the soil is completely depeleted due to intensive farming and the necessity of fertilisers to try and compensate. If there was better education for farmers, for example access to free consulation, good use of additional flora and correct crop-rotation can increase yields significantly. If someone is cutting down a hedge, it probably proves that they should be first on the list!
Most or all of continental western europe. AFAIK hedges used to be pretty common all over agricultural regions (e.g. belgium, beauce, bresse, bavaria, …), they largely got torn down after WW2, except for north-western france, and a few areas which retained them for historical or cultural reasons (e.g. Monschau).
> In almost all farms, there are hedges and they simply have gates or gaps in them to move between fields so they shouldn't be so inconvenient that the entire hedge needs to be removed.
That requires going to the gate in order to get in and out the field, as well as limit your ability to farm to the edge of the field, and it limits the size of the agricultural equipment you can use short of rebuilding the hedge any time it gets too big.
And the logic was likely that if you’re bringing heavy equipment to open larger gates in your hedge, and removing part of the hedges because land is being consolidated, you might as well remove all of it right now than have to do so every 10 years.
I was told the woodland areas are maintained as wind barriers for the otherwise flat plains. Not sure how true that is, but they’re definitely home to normal woodland fauna: dear, squirrels, rabbits, turkey, etc.
Many of these hedges were removed with farming mechanisation and industrialisation, though, in France for instance, and have completely disappeared in many places.
The wildlife loss was obvious even back then, not to speak of how the intimate Wealden landscape was almost completely despoiled. Luckily the wholesale destruction was slowed when farmers realized these wind and rain-swept prairies were destroying the topsoil.
Coherent and larger patches per owner, rectangular, enterable.
Land here seen from above looks tiled. Not cells.
Not something you'd openly speak to journalists about, god forbid the RSPB gets involved which are at this point a countryside mafia.