As the stubbles appear in East Anglia, they herald the time for Richard Gould and I to take to the margins. When the season shifts from summer to early autumn, we make our hedgerow management plans. We trudge many kilometres each day, measuring distances and widths, counting species, marking hedgerow trees and assessing the overall hedgerow condition. Once all of this data is collected, we make our prescriptions for future management — for laying or coppicing, changes to cutting regimes or leaving well alone.
One column on our spreadsheet sports the letters ‘DD’ in the top margin, short for ‘deer damage’. The information we glean from this column leads to another management prescription that’s just as beneficial to the hedgerow ecosystem as laying, staking and binding — deer control.
“We trudge many kilometres each day,
