"Victoria Clare" wrote in message
. 240.23...
Janet Baraclough.. wrote in
:

The message
from Victoria Clare contains these words:

I'm not a smallholder though. I just have some hedges. If I *were* a
smallholder I think I'd get them mechanically cut: it's an awfully slow
process if you have hedge surrounding several acres to face.

If you mechanically cut a hedge, you end up with a hedge that's bare
or leggy at the bottom and topheavy at the top. A hedge like that won't
keep out wind or animals. Laying it maintains an even thickness from
ground level to the top, which is a better windbreak, wildlife habitat,
and barrier to dogs/children etc.

It still takes a long time.

I lay my own garden hedges, but you'd need a lot of time and/or help
available to maintain all the hedges on a small farm that way: most people
won't have that, and will at most lay the odd one which has been
particularly neglected and needs thickening up, relying on a mechnical
cutter to do the rest.


Surely there's also an economy of scale, type thingy, I mean if you lay a
hedge well it won't need doing again for 10 years, but if you trim it you
have to trim it every year.

Kind of annoys me, round here, when I see farmers planting loads of young
saplings to fill out hedges, which at first sight looks good, and then see
them cutting the established hedges eitehr side of the new saplings down to
about 3 foot high and 2 foot wide.

Isn't the government providing grants for new hedge laying, to try to
improve the quality of the countyside for all the fauna out there, I can't
see a hedge 3x2 foot being a lot of use. Especially when all the blossom has
been chopped off, so no berries this year either.

Duncan