Betting our hedges – a chalky mystery?

Pop’s Wood smelt nice yesterday. A huge drift of dark green leaves has emerged from the leaf litter over the last few weeks and is now dominating the area immediately next to the entrance. This is wild garlic and it appears to be thriving, its familiar savoury scent hit me as soon as I came in through the gate – what a lovely way to start the day.

My plan of work for the day was to check up on the hedging plants, check the hazel stools for regrowth and continue processing the huge turkey oak that fell victim to storm Doris.

Pops’s Wood is surrounded by open countryside and other pockets of woodland. This allows deer to freely roam from field to wood and nibble their way through whatever they fancy en route. Part of what they seem to fancy at the moment are the 1,000 or so recently planted hedgerow plants that went in as whips in between November last year and February this year with the help of some family and friends.

Each whip was planted through a slit cut into a weed suppressing mat and then covered with a clear plastic spiral tube which is held up with a bamboo cane. My usual approach is to walk the length of the hedgerow and straighten up any canes that have been disturbed, re-position any tubes that have become dislodged and are no longer protecting the plants and tuck in any of the matting that has worked loose.

Rather satisfyingly despite our amateur efforts as virgin hedge planters the plants are beginning to grow. There are three sorts of plants making up the hedge; hawthorn, field maple and hazel. The hawthorn is the first to show signs of growth with bright green buds and leaves forming within the tubes. The hazel and field maple seem to be a bit slower but they are also now showing some signs of budding.

My assumption was that it was the deer that were disturbing the canes in an effort to eat the sweet new buds but that may not be the case. The photograph at the top of this blog shows a section of the hedge and on the inside of the tubes there is a white smear rather as if someone has carelessly run past the canes with a large brush covered in cream emulsion. Seemed odd and then I remembered a neighbouring woodland owner telling me that he had a large badger sett on his plot. I walked through to where he had pointed and sure enough there was a newly dug sett in the bank of an old chalk pit. So I think that it is more likely that the culprits for disrupting the hedgerow are the local badgers who fresh from digging in the wet chalk are walking through the canes. They just carry on in a straight line despite there being a new hedgerow in the way. I guess that is what woodland management is about; coming to an accommodation between the desire to make changes and coping with the needs of those that have been in the wood far longer than me and have their own views. More on the progress of the hazel coppicing and log cutting next time.