The benefits of planting a hedge in your garden.
Hedges in your garden provide structure and define boundaries, but they do so much more too.
Hedges provide homes and food for wildlife, they can capture air pollution, reduce noise from adjacent roads & affect your garden’s microclimate. Hedges can provide a living boundary, surrounding you & your garden in greenery and wildlife providing you with a calming environment for you to relax & enjoy.
Planting a hedge in your garden instead of putting up a fence or building a wall will bring so many positive changes to you and your garden.
Wind Protection
Hedges provide great wind protection for your garden. Unlike a wall or a fence, which will divert the wind upwards & over them creating turbulence, a hedge filters and calms the wind, which leads to improved air circulation and the formation of a sheltered micro-climate in the garden; this gives better growing conditions as a result of warmer soil. Your hedge will lock up carbon helping in the fight against climate change, they will also help to cool the air in hot weather, not just by their shadows but though the evapotranspiration that takes place on their leaves, providing your garden with a cooler climate for your plants and you to enjoy.
Pollution Capture & Noise reduction.
Plants used for hedges have the ability to reduce noise and capture air pollution. Plants with smaller ovate, rough and hairy leaves can trap small dust particles. These particles are washed to the ground by rain or fall off with older leaves. Choose evergreen varieties such as Cotoneaster franchetii, Yew (Taxus baccata) or Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata). Wide, tall and multi layered hedges made up of evergreen dense canopies are best at noise reduction, such as Cherry laurel, Holly and Japanese barberry.
Hedges can also aid flood mitigation, plants with large leaf surface, higher transpiration rates and evergreen canopies have been associated with higher rainfall retention, they will slow the saturation of the ground and reduce runoff, such as Golden Privet, Cotoneaster and Forsythia ( when in growth).
Wildlife
Hedges are an excellent natural shelter for wildlife, birds and insects make homes in them. Hedgehogs will shelter under them & will use them as corridors to move between gardens and the countryside. They provide food such as berries and flowers with pollen and nectar. Choose from Pyracantha, Yew & Hawthorn. By planting a mixed hedge you will extend flowering & fruiting times and provide different habitats for different species.
Crime Prevention
Thorny or spiny hedges are tremendously off putting to burglars. Particularly where your boundary is vulnerable, think about Hawthorn, Pyracantha and Berberis, Berberis darwinii is an evergreen variety with orange/yellow flowers in spring. It is thought that crime rates are lower in green areas and even that people are inclined to drive more slowly down a hedge lined street. Research has also shown that house prices go up on greener streets.
Personal well being
A report in the Mental Health Journal cited gardening as being able to reduce stress and improve mood, with a reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety. There is good evidence that just looking at a green space has positive effects on people’s mental health, helping them to relax and de-stress. So even if you are not a keen gardener or cannot do too much in the garden simply by surrounding your garden with hedges rather than walls and fences you will be providing yourself with a relaxing and distressing environment to enjoy.
Whatever type of hedge you choose to plant, it will be a welcome and useful part of your garden for you, a great home for nature and a positive impact on our environment.
