How a dead hedge in your garden could be a haven for wildlife this winter
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After recently discovering a couple of great apps for identifying insects and birds (called Seek and Merlin respectively), I have been trying to encourage more wildlife into my garden.
You might think this would be chiefly through careful choice of my plant life, but another approach is some strategically arranged dead wood.
Dead branches and twigs can be a surprisingly useful resource for a range of garden animals, from insects and other invertebrates to small mammals and birds.
They can be turned into simple log piles, obelisks made from long branches or even an ambitious “dead hedge”.
“It provides a fantastic habitat for all sorts of things,” according to Sam Southgate of the Royal Horticultural Society. “We’re good at providing nectar with our plants and our flowers, but habitat is sometimes forgotten.”
Now is a good time to begin any such projects because autumn and winter are the right months for pruning many trees and shrubs. It is easier to see what needs to be removed once their branches are bare.
Rotting down
Why is dead wood so helpful? As it rots, it becomes a food source or home to hundreds of insects and arachnid species, including beetles, flies, hoverflies, spiders, moths, wasps and bees.
These then become food for other animals, such as birds, as well as mice, voles and hedgehogs. “Dead wood is the starting point for lots of wildlife,” said Southgate. “It’s the bottom of the food chain.”
Rotting wood will attract different species, depending on the temperature and moisture levels. So if you have room, it can be worth making one pile in a sunnier spot, with another in dappled shade.
Logs don’t have to be neatly stacked like wood for burning usually is, says Paul Hetherington of the insect conservation charity Buglife. “Be a bit sloppy with how you put your logs together. That creates a lot more habitats for different bugs that need them.”
Digging deep
Burying some of the wood in the soil will also help attract insects that live underground. Where I am based, in the southeast of England, is a good region for enormous stag beetles, which are a threatened species.
The UK’s biggest beetle, they spend several years as larvae living off rotting wood underground and can reach an unnerving 11cm in length.
But I’m a big fan of stag beetle adults, if not the grubs, Last year I started off a wood pile by lightly burying a few large logs, then piling smaller ones on top.
If you are feeling creative, you could sit some of the larger logs upright, by part burying them, to make a pyramid shape, or even a tall obelisk that could be festooned with flowering climbers, like sweet peas or clematis.
Go large
Making a dead hedge requires enough strong branches for a series of vertical stakes put in the ground in two parallel rows. Thinner branches, and leafy twigs can then be laid horizontally between the stakes.
It might take time to get enough material to build up to the desired height. But the taller it gets, the more it will become attractive to garden birds, said Southgate. “They’ll nest in there, and their fledglings will have a ready-made larder just underneath them to feast on.”
The structure will need to be replenished with more garden prunings as the years go by and the material rots down. “Every year you have to keep topping up a dead hedge, otherwise it will disappear into the ground,” said Hetherington.
But that can be a bonus as it becomes an easy way to dispose of garden waste, without having to burn it or haul it away for disposal. “It’s a great way of getting rid of a lot of your waste,” said Hetherington.
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This is Everyday Science with Clare Wilson, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.