CAFRE celebrates National Hedgerow Week
May 5, 2025
Monday, 5th May marks the beginning of National Hedgerow Week – together with The Tree Council, CAFRE (College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise) are celebrating hedgerows and this year’s theme is the Future of Hedgerows.
Nicola Warden, Senior Biodiversity Technologist at CAFRE tells us, “National Hedgerow Week is about highlighting the important role hedgerows have in our farmed landscape. Working within the Biodiversity team at CAFRE, we help the farm team to manage existing hedgerows and plant new ones across the farms. Throughout the year, it is important to be considering options for future hedge planting and management. An existing hedge could be rejuvenated, or a new hedge could be planted to connect two existing habitats, to provide shelter for livestock or to provide wildlife with a network of living field boundaries where they can find adequate spaces to nest, rest or forage within”.
Nicola added, “A recent bird survey carried out across the CAFRE lowland farms found that there are a lot of hedgerow bird species such as Blackbirds, Wrens and Dunnocks using CAFRE hedges to nest or forage in. CAFRE has been managing existing hedgerows to maximise their biodiversity potential through moving away from an annual cut to a three-year rotational cut on suitable internal hedges. This has increased the area available to birds to set up safe nesting sites where the nests can be out of reach of predators. Moving to a three-year rotational cut will also allow the hedge species to produce more flowers during the summer and a lot of berries to feed the bird population throughout the winter period.”
Nicola continued, “In line with the theme for Hedgerow Week, CAFRE is committed to providing students with the skills and knowledge required to allow them to plant new hedges in the future and manage existing hedges to maximise their biodiversity potential. Each year approximately 300m of new hedgerow is established with Level 3 Advanced Technical Extended Diploma students.”
Nicola concludes, to find out more information about hedgerow establishment and the management of existing hedgerows, please visit the Biodiversity section of the website.