North Outreach: linking landscapes with miles of hedgerows

Hedgerows are more than just boundaries, they are vitally important features in the landscape, offering food and shelter for wildlife, providing historical and cultural links, improving farm economics and providing landscape-scale connectivity. Over the last few years, the Woodland Trust North Outreach team has led a large-scale hedgerow programme, collaborating with partners across the Northern Forest and beyond. From Lancashire to South Yorkshire, the initiative has supported projects to link landscapes and restore vital ecological corridors.

The power of hedgerows

Although they have been around for centuries, hedgerows are under threat from removal and poor management. What makes hedgerows crucial at a landscape scale is their role as ecological corridors, connecting pockets of existing and newly created woodland, meadows and wetlands. These green corridors are essential for:

• wildlife habitats that offer food and shelter for birds, mammals, and invertebrates
• sustainable agriculture to enhance biosecurity on livestock farms and sustain pollinators and biological pesticides in arable fields, increasing natural fodder and improving soil quality
• erosion and flood control, acting as natural barriers that stabilise soil and reduce water runoff
• landscape connectivity to help link woodland, meadow and wetland habitats to support species movement.

By prioritising hedgerow creation and restoration, the North Outreach team has taken a landscape-scale approach to conservation in the Northern Forest, ensuring benefits are realised across entire ecosystems.

A new partnership between the Woodland Trust and Peak District estate farmers was formed in summer 2024 and resulted in hedgerow planting just before Christmas. Credit: Alice Helliwell.

Building partnerships for success

The success of the hedgerow programme lies in its collaborative approach. Members of the North Outreach team – Doug, Beth, Hannah and Rachel – are building on existing partnerships and creating new ones, delivering bulk orders of hedgerow to various partners, farmer catchment groups, community interest companies (CICs) and landowners.

Working in partnership means North Outreach has been able to deliver hedgerows at a substantial scale, drawing on the partners’ in-depth local knowledge and great relationships with individual landowners. These partnerships are also encouraging community involvement throughout the Northern Forest and creating networking opportunities for likeminded landowners.

This project has involved working with over 20 partners including Community Forests over the past four years, and created 75km of hedgerows in the last two seasons alone. North Outreach wants to continue to grow the reach and success of the project. Through this, they can achieve landscape-scale conservation that involves and benefits a huge network of people and communities across the Northern Forest.

Doug and Beth from the North Outreach team visited farms in the Peak District in summer 2024, seeing some lovely hedgerow and copse planting that were a result of the hedgerow partnership programme. Credit: Beth Thomason / WTML.

From hedgerows to trees

For many landowners, hedgerow planting is their first positive taste of tree planting – and often leads to even more conservation efforts. Farmers are quickly seeing benefits such as improved grazing conditions, natural barriers and increased biodiversity. Many have decided to plant small copses or field corners alongside the hedgerows, adding to the variety of planting and increasing tree cover across the farms.

Working together to enhance landscapes

As the popularity of hedgerow planting grows, the North Outreach team remains committed to expanding its reach. With increasing community support and a growing network of partners, the programme shows how, together, we’re creating a greener, more connected landscape across the Northern Forest.

The River Holme Connections project planted over 4.5km of new hedgerow in the Holme Valley, West Yorkshire, during the 2023/24 season with help from the Woodland Trust and the White Rose Forest. Credit: Kayleigh Szostak / River Holme Connections

Be part of the Northern Forest

Want to plant trees? Whether you’re creating new woodland or extending an existing site, you can reap a whole host of extra benefits.

• Boost biodiversity.
• Provide shelter.
• Protect your soil.
• Fight flooding

Your new trees could be part of the Northern Forest and make a difference for people, wildlife and the environment in the North of England.