Hedgerows

The word 'hedge' comes from an Anglo-Saxon words 'haeg' or 'gehaeg' and usually consists of growing plants, shrubs and trees. A hedgerow consists of a hedge and features around it, e.g., banks, trees, walls, gates and fences.

Hedges were historically used to divide fields for farming and this still happens today. They are also used to keep animals in or out of land and to form boundaries around parks and gardens. Lots of animals use hedges for food and shelter during their life, like hedgehogs and harvest mice, blue tits, yellowhammers and bats.

When trees in a hedge are looked after in a particular way, the hedge is known as a 'managed' hedge. This means that the trees will not keep their usual shape. If the trees are no longer looked after and left to grow as they want, the hedge is called a 'relict' hedge.

If you want to know roughly how old a hedge is, you can do this by counting the number of species of shrubs and trees in a 30 metre stretch of it, and then multiplying the answer by 100. For example, if you found 4 different species, then the hedge would be about 400 years old (because 4 x 100 = 400).