CPRE Hampshire first phase Hedgerow Heroes - how it happened

In September 2020, Darren Lloyd, newly appointed Conservation Manager at the Meyrick Estate in Hinton Admiral, on the western border of the New Forest, contacted Emma Marrington at National CPRE. They said the estate were keen to run a hedgerow project and wanted to work with CPRE Hampshire on it. Might we be interested?

Emma explained that National CPRE had just called for ‘Expressions of Interest’ from local CPRE groups to put forward hedgerow planting and restoration projects to be part of a bid to the government-run, lottery-funded Green Recovery Challenge Fund. That was the start of it.

At CPRE Hampshire, we didn’t know the Meyrick Estate at this stage and hadn’t previously done any work on hedgerows. But this sounded interesting. We wanted to develop new ways of working with the farming community and also to engage a wider range of people in understanding the wider benefits of the countryside. So we agreed to explore the scope for collaboration.

We soon discovered the estate were looking to replant 1.7km of new hedgerow, along former historical boundaries, and gap up 1.3km of existing hedgerow. Indeed, in the longer term, they were aiming to restore up to 50 kilometres of hedgerow and regenerate the wildlife and landscape value of the estate.  It sounded like a great project.

We had very little time to submit the bid to National CPRE. I met with Darren a few days later to visit the proposed site and we managed to flesh out the details of our proposal and get the bid into National CPRE on time. It was submitted to the Green Recovery Challenge Fund together with bids from four other county CPREs. We waited eagerly for the answer. Unfortunately, we were unlucky this time round. The Fund was massively over-subscribed and CPRE’s hedgerow project had not quite made it through. But National CPRE had other potential funders in mind and told us not to give up hope.

Sure enough, we shortly learned that National CPRE had been able to secure funding from a London-based global alternative investment management company, otherwise known as a “hedge fund”. We were delighted and soon got to work getting our project, to be known as “Hedgerow Heroes” off the ground. Given that this was a completely new area for us, as indeed it was for the Meyrick Estate, this was quite a challenge. But, from the start, the collaboration was excellent. We agreed that the estate should handle the job of contracting the hedge-planting, while we focused on pretty much everything else. This meant finding volunteers, organising wildlife and soil surveys and developing a suite of other hedge-related activities.

The first step was to launch the project through local media, and in particular social media. We did this during the Tree Council’s first National Hedge Week in the first week of June. And the response was great. We soon had a group of 14 volunteers who were eager to get involved in all things hedge.

Coincidentally, we had recently been approached by a local hedge expert called Chris Sparkes, who was keen to spread word about the value of hedges and in particular about the benefits of hedge-laying. Chris readily agreed to lay on training courses for our volunteers and for a group of local young farmers. I was delighted to join in on some of the sessions. I have to admit that I didn’t really know what hedge-laying was but I soon discovered the importance of this traditional craft. The purpose is to enhance the quality of hedges by cutting the plants to within an inch of their life, bending them over diagonally and then allowing them to regenerate much more strongly. The way in which a laid hedge is staked and held together with hazel bindings also makes it very attractive.

We also wanted our volunteers to learn more than just hedge-laying. We asked the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust to provide training on bird surveys, bumblebee and butterfly identification, and on how to do soil surveys. All this was to help us establish what the baseline was for wildlife and soil quality before we planted the new hedges. The volunteers also learned how to survey the health of hedges, taught by the wonderful Megan Gimber, a self-confessed hedge nerd from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES). Megan was able to demonstrate a method, which is designed to enable relative amateurs to assess what state a hedge is in, and whether remedial action like hedge-laying, coppicing or a period of non-intervention is necessary. The PTES use this data to gather information about the state of the hedge stock across the whole country. We know that some half of England’s hedges have disappeared since the Second World War and many of the rest are in a severely degraded state.

The next part of our project was to engage with schoolchildren. We approached two schools in the area near the Meyrick Estate, one primary and one secondary. The teachers in both schools were excited to be involved and so, it transpired, were the kids.

We distributed lesson plans and arranged a visit by a class from Bransgore Primary School to the site where we would be restoring and planting the hedges. The students learned about the species of hedge to be planted and about the various species of wildlife – from bats, to dormice to hedgehogs – that rely on hedges for food, cover, navigation and accommodation. They drew lovely sketches of living hedges and were also keen to hear that planting hedges was good not just for birds and bees, but also for climate change. Some the 8 or 9 year olds put us adults to shame in their knowledge of carbon capture and storage!

We went back to Bransgore and also to the nearby secondary school in Highcliffe a couple of months later with Chris Sparkes, not just to talk a bit more about hedges, but also to plant one at each of the schools. The students helped select the site for the new hedges and to plant them. Many of the kids got really stuck in with the spades and using their heels to ensure the young hedge plants were firmly in the ground. At Christchurch, we had the local MP, Sir Christopher Chope along to watch. He is a fan of hedgerow restoration and was delighted to hear all about our project.

The project finishes in May 2022. It is the biggest ever undertaken by CPRE Hampshire and has enabled us to reach out to a whole new audience of people interested in learning about the value and benefits of the humble hedgerow. Over the last few months, we have managed to accomplish all the goals we set ourselves. We have:

• planted 3 kilometres of new hedge
• laid 500 metres of old hedge
• taught 44 schoolchildren about why hedges matter
• held 26 engagement days with a group of volunteers – who will continue to work with the estate on conservation work after our project is complete
• created new habitat for dozens of species of wildlife, many of which – such as the dormouse and hedgehog – are under severe pressure as a result of habitat loss over many years
• AND done our bit to capture and store a good deal more carbon and thus help mitigate climate change.

Not a bad result for all our CPRE Hampshire Hedgerow Heroes!

Report by Boyd McCleary, May 2022