'Ugly, pointless and potentially lethal': Why dead hedges are a gardening fad too far

Gardening fashions come and go — and sometimes it is difficult to know exactly how and why. One that bugs me at the moment is the dead hedge.

Those that I have seen are laid between two rows of uprights, typically fence posts, bashed into the ground in pairs, about a yard apart. Some of them also have chicken wire to keep the filling in place, although it looks rather ugly in the way that chicken wire always does.

You pile the space between them with your garden prunings, laid lengthwise to follow the direction of the fence. Some of the branches may stick out a bit, but you can tell yourself that they are for birds to perch on.

You build up the ‘hedges’, as and when you have the right sort of woody stuff to add to the heap, to a height of 6ft or 7ft (but, actually, they look a bit spooky once you reach about 4ft). The branches settle down over the months ahead and so you add more branches on top. In wet weather, it soon becomes a barrier of rotting, decaying wood. Lovely.

Now let us apply the William Morris test — do their proud owners know that dead hedges are useful or believe them to be beautiful? We can get rid of the ‘beautiful’ question at once because I have never seen a pretty one. Their aesthetic value is about on a par with a compost heap. They might make their owners feel good, but they aren’t going to win the Turner Prize, although I suppose it is possible that one has already done so.

It follows that the only possible excuse for dead hedges lies in their usefulness. Who finds them useful and preaches their virtues? People say they are good for wildlife and sustainable because they reuse prunings and clippings. There are other ways of dealing with all that surplus wood. The oldest practice, not always acceptable nowadays, is to pile it up, make a splendid winter bonfire and put oversize potatoes in the ashes to cook through and thrill the young.

When you go back, the next day, to the site of the bonfire, you find a heap of ashes and wonder how exactly you are supposed to use it in the garden. You will also find a circle of half-burnt branches that need to be gathered up and set alight again. However, most of us grow out of our infantile pyromania by the time we leave our teens and, besides, potatoes are much better baked in the bottom of the Aga.

The proper use for woody cut-offs, meaning everything from fallen branches and hedge trimmings to rose prunings and discarded Christmas trees, is to put them through a chipper. All is then reduced to smaller pieces — you can control the size — to make a springy surface for woodland paths or a fine heap to mulch down, feed your ornamental trees and shrubs and keep weeds at bay.

Unlike dead hedges, woody chips do look rather attractive, wherever they are used. If you leave them to rot down for a while, the bacteria on the surface get on with their recycling work so excitedly that the heaps warm up and actually start smoking. Ergo, baking potatoes is still an option. However, it is better to water the heap to cool it off and encourage the woodchips to rot down.

The branches you put in a dead hedge take much longer, if ever, to turn into a mulch, but they are just as flammable as piles of woodchips. Therein lies my principal objection to them — in dry summers, they are a fire risk. Ask a dead-hedge owner how they will prevent theirs from exploding into flames and they will reply: ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ Fag ends are dumped everywhere. Years ago, a stranger passing along a public footpath on my land casually chucked a lighted cigarette onto a pile of field-hedge trimmings. I pleaded with the fire brigade to arrive before the flames reached our electricity substation — which they did (the firemen, not the flames). The mere memory is enough to convince me that dead hedges are not only ugly and pointless, but potentially lethal, too. Avoid!

Charles Quest-Ritson’s book The Olive Tree (Ediciones El Viso, £50) is out now.

This feature originally appeared in the March 11 of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.