Hedges

Tuesday 16th February 2021

Today we took a look at hedges. We had to go out on ours walks and photograph a hedge and then say what state it is in and what we would do with it. Hedgerows - People's Trust for Endangered Species (ptes.org) has a lot of really good information about classifying hedgerows and what should be done to maintain them. In the UK we have about 500k miles of hedges - about half as much as we had before WW2. But over the last few decades they have been more protected so the decline in length has stopped. But what is left is not in good repair and that is what now needs to be addressed. The government wants to increase the number of hedgerows that we have - they store carbon, provide wildlife havens and corridors and encourage pollinators. If they are not in good condition though that doesn't help. We walked around Wokingham and it was difficult to find any that were in a good condition! The picture above may be one of the saddest hedges that we saw!