hedges – STEPHEN TOMLIN

Who doesn’t want to see the back of winter? The trouble is winter doesn’t want to see the back of us just yet. Spring is a tad tardy in appearing here in the borderlands, arriving in fits and starts. But the longer days and gradual greening is cause for cheer; the soundtrack of curlew, skylark and lapwing balm for the ear.

Good progress on the mile of roadside hedging either side of our abode established by our friends and neighbours at Southridge. I continue the volunteer monitoring, rectifying fallen guards, replacing rotten or broken canes. Now hawthorn and hazel, blackthorn and run ahead roses are breaking cover, waving in the wind atop their protective plastic tubes.

Earlier this year, one misty day, we stopped to right a cast ewe in our neighbour’s field. The animal’s gravid barrel body and dense fleece had stopped it righting itself, so glad to lend a helping hand. The flock were taken off last week, back to the farm, and now the biggest and best pasture is filling with ewes and lambs.

Next to it our four acres of rough grazing is back to host the tups – Texels and the Border Leicester ram who has featured in this diary before. They loll about not doing much, like old fellas down the working mens club, while their offspring skip and leap about on the other side of the dry stone wall, oblivious of their presence.

Delighted to catch hares re-appearing in the garden at all hours, whether grazing or just passing through. With no dogs or cats on the premises they have no fear of being driven off. Am convinced these particular hares are the adult form of those last seen as leverets on summer evenings, gathered as a family group on the garden paths whilst their dam was out and about foraging.

Earlier this year I decided to create a dead hedge in the garden. By recycling as vertical stakes the best preserved chestnut paling in the picket fence that separated kitchen garden from meadow we were able to establish the hedge’s breadth and length. Then built up horizontal layering and weave with pruned branches of old willow, alder and various woody bushes over following weeks. A remarkably satisfying transition, relatively easy to accomplish, in the rustic tradition!

We’re hoping this dead hedge will benefit resident wildlife, act as a windbreak, and add another blended structural feature to the garden. I’d been gradually repositioning the bigger species of daffodils along the former fence line over the years so pleased to see they sit equally well, framed by the new hedge.

I never knew there were so many varieties of willow. In the wake of my clearing old established ones from the largest copse the serious family gardeners/ craftswomen planted these varieties in wet ground and large pots with an eye to harvesting for weaving into baskets and wreathes. I will chip what they don’t use for mulching and adding to compost. The straight young wands go down the throat of my noisy little chipper a treat and cause it few digestion problems, unlike tough knotty stuff like hawthorn or blackthorn.

A lovely family Christmas present was a solar powered bird box with camera. Setting it up proved a tad tricky (It helps to read the instructions about operational range from router) but after a few false starts and final technical know how applied by the giver, we were finally set and ready to go.

Within hours the camera showed us a shake of moss on the box floor. I took that to be a down payment by a would be tenant and gradually more material appeared. At first I thought a wren might be the mystery depositor but soon we caught sight of the visitor. Rather unsurprisingly it turned out to be one of the blue tits that colonise the garden every year.

The bird’s hyperactive action in burrowing and fluffing the moss with its wings before stopping to view the result and flying off was a revelation. That led us to think it must be drying through aerating the fluffed up soft material. Constant re-arrangement takes place as a dense pile builds. Strands of dried grasses and cloudy swirls of sheep’s wool have been integrated into the uniform bed of green and we await full time occupation and laying of eggs.

A few days ago we recorded this remarkable night time image. The adult bird has spent a lot of time preparing to roost by pulling out hundreds of its feathers to form a warm duvet to maintain life through the cold night. Early morning will be spent relaying them.

Meanwhile in the open gated garden shed we call the railway hut – the body of a former goods wagon – blackbirds have again taken up residence. In previous years they favoured a seed tray on a high shelf to support their intricate weaved abode. This year, oblivious of our entrances and exits inches from them, their nest sits exposed atop coat hook nails flush by the doorway. The hen, all head and tail, totally silent and still, keeps a sharp eye on our comings and goings.

Post publication update: Two new arrivals

Starting to trap moths again. Amongst their number the usual early arrivals on the spring scene like Hebrew Character, Clouded Drab (pictured) and Common Quaker. Look forward to having more species visit as we warm and settle. That and following the progress of the nesting birds we know about while looking out for signs of where our other avian residents – wagtails, dunnocks, robins etc – will be bringing their broods into the world.

Thrilled to see work starting along the lane, preparing for hedge planting. And autumn the time to do it. Two young guys busy with strimmers clearing herbage ready to receive the whips. The line they are patiently planting by hand makes its way wherever there’s room. Along drainage ditches in some places, banks in other, utilising the space between fence and tarmac on the single track roadway. Laybys are left open due to lack of space. I stop and chat to them. They tell me it’s a 75% hawthorn mix with crab, blackthorn, hazel etc making up the rest. Order books are full and they’re working all over to meet demand from farmers and landowners taking advantage of current grants available.

Our farming neighbour pays upfront and will eventually get his grant money from the ministry. In the yard when I’m up at Southridge on other business I stop to congratulate him. His biggest fear is that winter’s snow and compacted ice cleared from the road piling up on the infant trees in these first few years will destroy them. Given the alterations in weather patterns caused by climate change I think that’s less likely to happen, though excessive flooding might affect the ones in the ditch. The plants are from good stock, double spaced, warmed and protected from the elements and weed choke by their plastic guards and canes. We will be following their progress with keen interest, especially those planted by the fencing opposite us here on the corner.

Our friend the groundsman and his team turned up this week and were working for hours. The high sheltering hawthorn hedge on the east end boundary wall got its bi-annual trim. Still plenty of room left for nesting birds next spring. In our field his two friendly young employees strim the rampant soft rush and reeds all the way back to the crags and beyond down the slope. What a difference it makes to our immediate view, opening up the ground and somehow lifting the land by restoring the primacy of grass, however rough the grazing.

Best of all the boss, in a mini-digger hired for the purpose, skilfully tackles our big overgrown bonfire. He neatly separates and clears the wood and herbage, creating a pit in the process into which he packs the bulk of matter. He warns we’ll have even more stingers next year as a result, their seeds now well spread. Finally using the last of our store of diesel (safer to handle than petrol) he fires the remaining combustible material. A haunting sensation to have woodsmoke billow and merge with the deadening mist as a late sun starts to assert itself.

Our contractor is a big lad but a gentle one, with a keen eye for wildlife, and we always swop stories of encounters with the natural world. Three times while wielding the bucket he spies toads in the spill. Stopping work, he gathers them up to release by the garden ponds. He’s tickled by my the story of the hare who I suspected gave birth to her leverets in the wild protective mess of the pile and my later encounter with them at dusk. (See ‘Hare Raising’ / July 14th 2024)

Our wonderful cheerful handyman and friend was also here a couple of weeks ago. He did a very neat job designing and building two adjoining wooden compost bins to replace the handsome but clapped out beehive style ones. Next to them a big black plastic bag receives the tons of leaves I’ve been raking up. The resulting leaf mould will make for good humus when mixed into the raised beds in the vegetable garden next year.

The ancient but effective petrol driven scarifier gives me a good workout as I trundle it round the grassed areas of the garden accumulating moss and leaves, which then get added to the compost. Gave the lower quadrant of the meadow a particularly thorough going over, this way and that. Later I’ll work up those mini-patches of exposed earth where the molehills once were to sow a mix of yellow rattle and red bartsia – meadow plants that grow semi-parasitically on grass – in hope of making ingress against the couch which still predominate in that patch.

Lest we forget….Post boxes around the country have been scene set in recent years with an increasing range of imaginative tableaux. Here’s the latest from the big village.

Tag: hedges

Hedges, Nests and Willow

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