Living on the (H)edge

The kitchen garden backs onto a row of terraced houses. Along this southern boundary, there is a giant hedge (Photo 1). Ivy dominates the hedge which overhangs our boundary. Occasionally, I will trim the overhanging vegetation, shred it and put it through my hot composting system.

Photo 1: The Walled Kitchen Garden

House sparrows nest and roost in this giant hedge. A cacophony of sound often greets me when I visit my composting corner but soon changes to an eerie silence apart from the odd chirp from a young house sparrow.

I got a bit of a shock the other day on my way to tend to the hot compost bins. One side of the hedge was much reduced in height. I could hear noises on the other side of the wall so called out and received a reply.

Photo 2: The much-reduced Ivy Hedge

I almost said that it wasn't the best time of year to be cutting down hedges due to nesting birds but I would have been wasting my breadth as the job had already been finished. My neighbour would have happily hacked down all the hedge if he had been able to access it.

Photo 3: Close-up of the Much-Reduced Hedge

Being neighbourly, I offered to take all the cuttings for my hot compost bins. I probably should have checked how much stuff there was before making the offer because he started chucking it over the wall (I had agreed to this).

Photo 4: Hedge Cuttings Covering the Maturation Compost Bins

Photo 5: Side View of the Cuttings Pile

It took me about 6 - 8 hours to cut up the hedge trimmings into 3" to 4" pieces ready for shredding. In all, I ended up filling the equivalent of 11 x 80L bins (approx one cubic metre) before the kitchen garden returned to normal. You can see in Photo 6 how much the height of the hedge had been reduced.

Photo 6: All Tidied Up

There were a couple of house sparrow nests in the hedge debris ...

Photo 7: House Sparrow Nest

... and, fortunately, no eggs or young. There is still quite a lot of the original hedge still standing so hopefully the sparrows will continue to breed and raise their young here. For the moment they are still visiting our bird feeders in good numbers.

In an earlier blog, I made reference to man's urge (it is usually men!) to tidy up nature and this is another example. I suppose the neighbour's garden lets in a bit more light and I've gained lots of greenery for composting but that doesn't, in any way, make up for the fact that some house sparrows are now homeless.