By Katherine Clark, Alice L. Mauchline, Tijana Blanuša, Michelle Felton, Simon Potts, and Michael P. D. Garratt.
Hedges and hedgerows are distinctive features across urban and rural areas, and can benefit wildlife, people and the environment in a range of ways, including providing wildlife habitat and connecting varied habitats across a landscape. While their origins lie in agriculture, separating fields and containing livestock, hedgerows also play extensive roles in urban areas, and link people with nature in a range of environments.
To support their roles and to maximise the benefits they can provide, people need to effectively manage hedgerows. We explored the literature around the benefits of hedges and hedgerows and discussed their role with farmers, conservationists, educators, researchers and other stakeholders in rural and urban environments. We also explored the knowledge and information people need to effectively engage with planting, managing and maintaining hedgerows.
Stakeholders clearly valued the benefits hedges and hedgerows provide. However, there was a mismatch between the information available and the information and knowledge people said they needed. For example, stakeholders were interested in the benefits of hedgerows in relation to reducing flood risks and mitigating the impacts of climate change and would like practical guidance on managing and planting hedges and hedgerows to maximise the benefits they can provide, however these areas were less widely researched. There were also gaps in the geographical and environmental coverage of research, with most studies concentrated on rural hedgerows, with researchers doing the majority of research in Europe.
We highlight priority areas for future hedgerow research, including under studied benefits of hedgerows such as flood-risk alleviation and climate change mitigation and research that tests and compares hedge management approaches, and also the need to effectively disseminate this research to support both the practical management of these important habitats and the policies impacting on them.
Relational Thinking 