In addition to a positive effect ecosystems, hedgerows can have more direct benefits and yields to humans depending upon their design, including firewood, building materials, reduced irrigation, increase soil fertility, free fertilizer, improved soil carbon, reduced soil loss, garden stakes and trellises, tool handles, better plant growth from shelter, and of course, foods and medicines. In most places where hedgerows exist, they have long been seen as an important source of both. 

 

Designing an Edible Hedgerow or Tapestry Hedge

 

While one can use similar techniques for broad-scale windbreaks or livestock enclosures by making appropriate adaptations, this article will focuss on the small-scale edible hedgerow or tapestry hedge, based off of European designs and traditions. 

 

It was a couple of our favorite foraging spots which inspired our desire to have an edible fence. One in particular, was a naturally-occuring hedgerow that produced a large variety and quantity of fruits, nuts and vegetables throughout the season, all with little to no annual maintenance from humans. 

 

Compared to our hard work as guest farm laborers, the high rewards and low maintenance of our favorite hedgerow seemed like a great idea, and we decided to “take it home” with us. 

 

But when we began looking into expert recommendations on how to grow an edible hedge in the US, we were surprised to see everyone advocating against the species and spacings that was common to our favorite foraging spots. 

 

Was mother nature growing these natural food forests all wrong, as the experts suggested? 

 

However, when we looked into resources on traditional hedge culture, species and techniques in other countries, we found systems that looked very much like what was occuring naturally at our favorite high-productivity, low-maintenance spots. (Mueller, European Field Boundaries Volumes 1 &2, etc.)

 

While modern US recommendations look very different in terms of species selection, and management, the biggest difference between traditional hedge, hedgerow and windbreak technologies, and modern recommendations (at least in the US) is in spacings. Most common recommendations I can find from US sources recommend planting at spacings where crowns just intermix or touch at maturity (perhaps 7-10′ centers for many shrub species, with many suggesting 5′ was too tight) whereas traditional forms typically space plants at 1- 2 1/2′. 

 

Perhaps these seem very close to a gardener, but these spacings approximate what one commonly sees occuring in natural thickets in many biomes, including our favorite foraging locations. 

 

But, despite the expert recommendations, these tight naturalistic plantings found in traditional hedgery, which have proven their effectiveness in experiments over millennia, have become the cutting edge of scientific forestry (as well as many Permaculture circles) throughout the world, since the 1980s when a Japanese forester named Akira Miyawaki took notice of the way Nature grows forests.

It’s no coincidence that this evolved technology of hedgerows closely resembles the cutting edge reforestation program referred to as the Miyawaki technique. Miyawaki was a forester interested in regrowing healthy forests in Japan for purpose of maintaining habitat, controlling erosion, sequestering carbon and solving other problems through the ecosystem services, who noticed that the plant spacings and communities used in “conventional” forestry practice looked nothing at all like the types of spacings and communities that would occur during natural reforestation, and that the conventional approach often performed poorly in comparison to the way nature solved this same problem. He hypothesized that the conventional recommendations were tested and developed to optimize commercial yield in various ways, not to optimize fast, easy cost-effective establishment of healthy forest. Basing his approach off of the observation of naturally-occuring rapid reforestation, he developed a system of using seed from locally-adapted, free specimens, with intermixed stages of succession, at very tight plantings, and he found that nature was solving the problem the right way. Across many climates and ecosystem types, Miyawaki’s technique has been replicated and found to far out-perform conventional practice, with far less cost and fewer destructive chemical inputs. 

Indeed, some US sources appear to criticize Miyawaki’s methods as inappropriate to North America’s idealized “natural landscapes,” because they do not leave enough room for our most important North American “nature area” keystone species: tax dollars, corporate petrochemicals, herbicides, and heavy machinery. 

For some, it’s counter-intuitive, but research has found that even on spare soils in dry climates with a risk of desertification, the tight plantings of the Miyawaki technique lead to rapid establishment with little after-planting care, even where conventional techniques failed with continued Intervention!

This goes well with current ecological theory and research, which has found that while we previously believed that competition between plants would impair growth and establishment, in such tight, naturalistic plantings cooperation out-weighs competition and gives the individuals an advantage compared to situations with unnaturally wide plant spacings. 

(Integrated Hedgerow design by Bill Mollison, for Semi-tropical climate)

Moreover, with rapid, dense growth, we humans can begin to reap the rewards of ecosystem services – windbreak, enhanced microclimates, erosion-prevention, water harvest, buffering, wildlife habitat, biodiversity and food (under tight plantings most species will bare “precociously” at an early age) – in a very short order, rather than struggling with establishment for 15 years for a wind-break to finally serve its purpose. With all this, it’s no wonder that cutting-edge Permaculture designers like Geoff Lawton have begun to implement Miyawki’s research for such applications as forest gardens, ally cropping and, of course, hedgerows. 

As a very rough guideline, my recommendation for a hedge where production is the main goal is to plant into a 10′ wide strip of at least 30′ of length (to have much room for diversity) with larger woody perennials at 2′-3′, and with smaller woody shrubs and herbaceous perennials filling in the gaps to create approximately 1′ spacings. I typically don’t plant anything direcly between woody perennials, except perhaps for short-term crops like Jerusalem artichokes, which can provide a big yield in early years, ensure a complete hedge effect in the first season, provide ample biomass for mulch, and then die back as woody perennials establish. For best results, very plants by height, and species, planting main species such as hazelnuts at standard spacings, and filling in the gaps with smaller species. For larger hedgerows and windbreaks, I recommend multiple rows of woody perennials, but still at tight plantings. For hedges where security or animal enclosure is the main goal, I recommend 1′ spacings, with a high percentage of thorny species such as hawthorn, blackthorn, or sea buckthorn.