Appreciating our hedges: National hedgerow week Norman Jackson

Walk any lane in Betchworth or Buckland in May and you will know, even before you see it, that hawthorn is in bloom. The scent arrives first — heavy, sweet, faintly medicinal — and then the hedgerow comes into view, its branches smothered in white blossom so dense it looks, from a distance, like snow lying sideways on the field margins. For a few weeks each spring, our hedges announce themselves to anyone paying the least attention.

This week is National Hedgerow Week, and it feels like an appropriate moment to say something about the hedges that help shape the character our parishes — and to notice, properly, what they do.

Hedges are not just boundaries
It is easy to take hedgerows for granted. They mark field edges, they line the lanes, they have always been there. But the Tree Council — whose National Hedgerow Week initiative draws attention to these remarkable features each year — makes a point worth dwelling on: hedgerows are essentially formed from trees. The hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, hazel, elder and dogwood that make up our local hedges are not merely hedging plants. They are trees in their own right, with all the ecological significance that implies.

Britain's hedgerows collectively run to hundreds of thousands of miles. They form the largest semi-natural habitat network in the country — a web of woody corridors connecting woodland fragments, farmland and urban green space across the landscape. For the wildlife that depends on them, they are simultaneously shelter, food source, nesting site and safe passage through an otherwise fragmented countryside.

What our hedges are doing right now
In the 4Bs our hedges are working hard. The lanes and roads between the village and the North Downs carry some of the oldest hedgerow fabric in the area — mixed species hedges with field maple, hazel, spindle and dogwood alongside the hawthorn and blackthorn, their species diversity a rough indicator of their age. The rule of thumb among ecologists is that each additional woody species in a thirty-metre stretch represents roughly a century of hedgerow history. By that measure, some of our parish hedges are medieval.

Those hedges are doing something measurable and important right now. They are capturing carbon in their woody biomass and roots. They are slowing surface water run-off across the slopes of the Downs, reducing the flood risk to the village below. They are providing the dense, thorny nesting cover that species like yellowhammer, whitethroat and linnet — all of them in long-term national decline — still find in well-managed mixed hedges. And in the week or two either side of hawthorn blossom, they are among the most important insect habitats in the landscape, supporting the early-season pollinators on which our fruit trees and wildflowers depend.

​Hawthorn: this year's focus
The Tree Council has a particular focus on hawthorn for 2026 — and it is easy to see why. Hawthorn is the backbone of the British hedgerow. It is also one of our most ecologically generous native trees: its blossom feeds hundreds of insect species in spring; its dense, spiny growth provides some of the most secure nesting cover available to birds; its berries — the haws — sustain fieldfares, redwings and thrushes through the winter months when little else is available.

But hawthorn faces real pressures. Climate change is altering the timing of its flowering, creating mismatches with the insects that depend on it. Disease pressure is increasing. And decades of hedge removal, flailing at the wrong time of year, and the gradual loss of traditional hedge management have reduced both the extent and the quality of hawthorn habitat across the country.

The Tree Council is running free online talks this season to help people understand the threats hawthorn faces and how communities can contribute to knowledge about its resilience. If hawthorn matters to you — and after a walk down any Betchworth lane in May, it is hard to see how it could not — it is worth joining one.

What we can do
Our hedges are in reasonable condition compared to many parts of lowland England — but reasonable is not the same as thriving. The pressures on farmland hedgerows are real: intensive cutting regimes that prevent flowering and fruiting, the gradual loss of hedgerow trees as old specimens are not replaced, and the incremental narrowing of hedge bases through repeated cultivation.
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As a community, there are things we can do. If you manage a garden boundary or an orchard hedge, consider cutting only once every two or three years and leaving the berries for winter birds. If you are planting a new boundary, choose native mixed species — hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, hazel — rather than the laurel or leylandii that dominate so many suburban edges. And if you are a farmer or landowner with hedgerows on your land, the Sustainable Farming Incentive now includes well-funded options for hedge management and restoration that are worth exploring.

The Betchworth and Buckland Nature Trail passes through and alongside some of our best local hedgerow habitat. In National Hedgerow Week, it is worth walking it slowly, looking at what is in the hedges rather than past them, and thinking about what those woody tangles of hawthorn, blackthorn and field maple are quietly doing for this landscape — and for us. This photo of the of the hawthorn and blackthorn hedge along the path north of the Betchworth Post Office is a great example. It leads to older and more mature hedges along the A25. 

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