hedgelands: a wild wander around britain’s greatest habitat

On this joyous journey around the wild edges of Britain, celebrated author Christopher Hart takes us through the life, ecology and history of the humble countryside hedge and how it is inextricably woven into our language, landscape and culture.

Hedges - or hedgerows - have long been an integral part of the British landscape. An ancient, human-made boundary, hedgerows have become a critically important haven for wildlife and are now being recognised as one of the greatest ’edge’ habitats on Earth.

Britain boasts 400,000 kilometres of hedgerows, but has lost 50 per cent of them since the Second World War and their slow deterioration today is becoming a huge threat to the ecosystem.

In Hedgelands, Christopher Hart shares the history of the hedge, highlighting the hawthorn and hazel of ancient hedgerows, and reveals its abundance of wildlife, from the elusive dunnock to the iconic nightingale, the industrious hedgehog to the miniscule harvest mouse.

He demonstrates how this true environmental hero and powerful climate ally can help rebuild species-rich, resilient havens for birds, mammals and insects. Hedges play a vital role in mature woodland, grassland and even wetland, all of which can offer us much-needed ecological diversity and carbon sequestration.

Through rewilding a patch of land in southwest England, Christopher shows us how easy, joyful and rewarding it is to restore even the smallest stretch of hedge. Whether you live in the country or the city, Hedgelands shares how simple actions can make a huge difference to the future of our precious hedges - and environment.

＂What’s good for us is good for nature, and what’s good for nature is good for us. And nowhere is this more true than in the bustling, flourishing, flowering, fruiting and altogether glorious native British hedge.＂--Christopher Hart

Christopher Hart has written ten novels published to date, both literary and historical, including Lost Children and Rescue Me, while his historical fiction, written under the pen name of William Napier, includes Julia, the best-selling Attila trilogy and the Last Crusaders trilogy. His work has been praised in both The Times Literary Supplement and the Sunday Sport. He has also published numerous short stories, essays and reviews, and has been a freelance journalist since the 1990s, for The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and others. He lives in Wiltshire, where he is rewilding seven acres and a hedge.

Jonathan Thomson has since 2014 co-owned and run a 25-acre rewilding project called Underhill Wood Nature Reserve in Wiltshire, where he has restored a hedge to its former glory through the practice of conservation hedge laying, a technique on which he is now advising the government for their hedgerow strategy. Jonathan is also involved with the John Muir Award for young people. He grew up on a small dairy farm in rural New Zealand, and the natural world has always played an important part in his life. Since living in the UK, his awareness of the need to protect, conserve and restore our squeezed and threatened native fauna and flora has grown more urgent.