HOME

ARTICLES

Hedgerows And Hedge trees

 'What is a hedge?'

It depends on what part of the country you come from. In Cornwall it can be a earth bank with stone sides, in Devon it can be a high turf bank topped with a line of shrubs. In the Midlands a managed structure of low cut hawthorn. It appears most counties have their own style of hedge the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary is " a closely planted row of bushes or low trees especially forming (the) boundary of fields, gardens or roads; similar boundary of turf or stone etc".
There are various ways a hedge can be form the definition above presumes that all hedges have deliberately been planted. Certainly during the 17th and 18th centuries thousands of miles of hedges were planted, even today we are still planting new ones, hedges can arise by other means.
Hedgerow Regulations 1997
 "a row of bushes forming a hedge, with the trees etc growing in. For the purpose of the Regulations, the hedgerow does not have to contain trees, but any trees growing in it form part of the of the hedgerow. Where a former hedgerow has not been actively managed and grown into a line of trees, it is not covered by the Regulations. However, trees in hedges may be protected by separate felling controls or by Tree Preservation Orders. The essential feature of a hedgerow is a row of bushes."
The Hedge Tree Handbook produced by The Tree Council have combined and condensed all the definitions and consider a hedge to be. " a linear landscape feature consisting of managed woody shrub and tree species, forming the boundary of fields, gardens or roads."