500words

The Meikleour Beech Hedge, in Meikleour near Perth in Scotland, has been recognised since 1966 as the longest hedge in Britain and the highest of its kind in the world. The hedge was planted in autumn 1745 by Jean Mercer and her husband, Robert Murray Nairne, on the  Marquess of Lansdowne's Meikleour estate. It is said that the hedge is a living landmark to the men who planted it; they were Jacobite sympathisers who were called to fight in the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, and none of them returned alive. In order to remember them, and her husband who also died in the battle, Jean Mercer said that the hedge should be left to grow towards the heavens. And grow it did; over the last few hundred years, the Meikleour Beech Hegde has grown to an incredible height of 30m and is 530m (one third of a mile) long. In fact, it is so huge that the process of cutting and re-measuring the hedge takes four men approximately six weeks to complete; in 2019 this operation cost t...

  OUR HEDGE We have a hedge and it is ancient and lovely.   Lovely to look at but not great to cut as it is about 12 foot tall and 8 foot wide in places.   Peter and I (mainly Peter) used to cut it ourselves but now we get someone younger, fitter and with less fear to do it for us.   The bit on the hill is especially tricky and risky! We worry about the hedge because there are 4 other gardens that share it.   Presumably it is difficult for them to cut it too – although each of them only has a little bit compared to us.   We worry that someday someone will get fed up cut a chunk out of it and replace it with a fence, or a wall, or a little leylandii hedge or some such.   I don’t think they really can, as it is “our” hedge but who knows?   Someday we might come home and it could be gone.   There is legislation around this.   When a hedge sits along the boundary between 2 properties both landowners need to be in agreement before it is r...

  A hedge is a line of closely spaced shrubs or trees – designed to form a barrier or mark a boundary of an area.   A hedge is also a way of containing a path, or collection of paths that form a maze.   Mazes can be either a single route from start to finish or may offer a convoluted labyrinth of options from a start to end point.     The definition of labyrinth and a maze indicates that the first has a single path, whereas the second may not necessarily lead to a centre.   However, as the mazes became more popular this term encompassed both single paths and multiple options. The first recorded labyrinth was in Egypt in the 5 th Century BC, and one of the most famous labyrinths is the Cretan Labyrinth – with the Minotaur at it’s centre.   These of course had brickwork walls.   Most theories on labyrinths involve their use as a form of spiritual journey, or a way to evidence a path towards something – Nordic fishermen walked through labyrint...

W hat’s in a hedge?        It will come as no surprise to most of you that I have a n interest in hedges at present. I have recently spent many happy weekend hours in a damp , muddy field digging little holes in stony ground and inserting wee whips of hawthorn, hazel, rose , whitebeam , dogwood and blackthorn.       N orthern I reland has the highest density of field boundary hedges in the UK which gives us the impression of a wooded landscape whereas, in fact, the island of Ireland has the lowest native woodland cover in Europe . So , t he abundance of hedgerows goes some way to making up for the lack of deciduous woodland and hedgerows are an important habitat for a wide range of wildlife , supporting all levels of the food chain.   Although there are some ancient hedges in Northern Ireland , most are substantially younger than in the rest of Britain where hedges can be upwards of 1000 years old , Northern Ireland’s hedges t...