Hedgerow, Sutcliffe Park - Spring 2024. Planted by the Friends in conjunction with Trees for Cities, January 2018
In 2019, to halt global heating, the government’s Climate Change Committee advised that the UK hedgerows should be extended by 40% across the rural and urban landscape. Given the 500,000km that already existed, that meant a further 200,000km or 125,000 miles - five times the circumference of the Earth.
Just so happens in this respect, urban areas have a lot to offer. Look around - all those miles of boring railings, walls and wire fences that skirt our parks, schools, playgrounds, carparks, hospitals.
It’s not just the woody branches that store the carbon. The roots add other 40% to what’s growing above ground. Then there’s the leaf litter – via earthworms they enter the soil and up goes the carbon content for considerable distances. On rough and ready figures, a kilometre of well-established hedgerow can lock up between 18 and
28 tonnes of carbon – that’s equivalent to between 66 and 102 tonnes of carbon dioxide pulled from the atmosphere.
The Climate Change Committee additionally noted the value of hedgerows for restoring biodiversity. According to a Natural History Museum study of 2021, due to human activity almost half the UK’s biodiversity has been lost since the Industrial Revolution. Worryingly, the 2023 State of Nature Report shows the decline continuing. Hedgerows can help lead the fight back. Not for nothing has the network been labelled the country’s largest nature reserve. Around 600 plants are known to be supported, as are at least 1500 insects, 65 birds and 20 mammals.
And hedgerows - those unobtrusive, ‘green corridors’ - are attractive. In leaf from spring to late summer, a variety of flowers are followed by colourful autumn fruit. All the while they’re reducing traffic noise, filtering polluted air and moderating the scorching summer temperatures we are experiencing now.
What’s the potential for new hedgerows in the Royal Borough? To what extent can Greenwich contribute to the Climate Change Committee request? They have so much to offer, we at the Greener Greenwich Community Network are interested to find out. Can you help? Let us know at ggcommunitynetwork@gmail.com the places that might contribute and we’ll map the location and record the ‘mileage’ great or small.
P.S. Hedgelink - Working together for the UK’s hedgerows, the umbrella organisation for all who value hedgerows, says “We recommend that everyone with the capacity to promote planting and seeding of hedges through urban and rural landscapes should commence or continue with the urgency that the climate emergency requires”.
Newly planted hedgerow at Plum Lane Community Orchard, March 2024