HEDGES

On the other hand, his children used to play around the dear old green hedge fencing off the entire farmstead and which gave shade and protection from the wind and, besides, was a wonderful place to hide in. All this was gone once the farmer had cut it down, and with it was also gone the friendly warm feeling of homeliness and security. There was nothing to hold back the wind now, it was free to rage in all its fury. With the wind breaker gone, there was no protection left for soil and plants. And in winter there was no hedge to stop a heavy snowfall from forming snow cornices, that is, dangerous overhanging ledges.

The children were not the only ones to miss the hedges. In Switzerland these hedges were called “living fences,” because that is what they really were. They provided shelter for other living creatures, so when the border hedges were uprooted, many of the small creatures that had benefited from them disappeared also. There were no young fir trees, no horn beam trees, no hawthorn bushes to live in, breed in and to enjoy life in. The little garden creatures were forced to move elsewhere. Hedgehogs, weasels, frogs, lizards, slow worms and salamanders left and nothing was left to control the garden pests. It was now that the fight to control them by means of poison spraying began. Not only the pests but whatever the pesticides fell on was poisoned. Eating anything contaminated would mean death. Robbed of their natural nesting places and having to feed on poisoned food, the birds suffered great losses. Nature’s course had been tampered with. No one had given any thought to the tireless daily activity of our feathered friends. If we consider the great quantity of insects a few hundred birds living in the hedges can gobble up day by day, we will marvel and begin to understand why years ago it was possible to reap fine seed and stone fruit without having to use dangerous insecticides.

On both the forest floor and under the hedges, millions of beneficial bacteria grow, forming a virtual laboratory, supplying the land with a constant flow of invaluable microorganisms. The hedges have always helped to maintain this biological balance, and have been of special importance to adjoining fields and beds. Orchards also benefited greatly, even if the grower may not always have been fully aware of it.

Hedges have always played an important part in the lands proper cultivation. When they disappear, field mice and voles can take over, since their natural enemies are no longer around. Where neither frogs nor lizards, salamanders, hedgehogs or weasels find a place to live, rodents enter, causing considerable damage to our orchards by their burrowing and voracious activity. With the sad disappearance of the hedges, the busiest enemies of the troublesome rodents, hawks and buzzards, withdraw and also decrease.

The same function that the hedges had around gardens and farmland, bushes and shrubs had alongside our rivers and streams. Their roots fortified the river banks and the bushes accommodated a host of smaller creatures. Here too, birds, weasels, hedgehogs, frogs, salamanders, lizards, slow worms and many other animals, found shelter and food.

Despite all these invaluable advantages, hedges were forced to give way to lifeless concrete fences.