Let's Grow More Hedges: Free Support For Local Gardens

By Dan Fletcher

Hedgerows play a vital role in supporting the natural world, yet they are disappearing from the UK landscape. We want to change that and help more people grow hedges in their gardens.

To support this, Greening Tetbury is delighted to offer free guidance, contributions towards hedge plants, and hands-on help with planting for Tetbury residents.

Our lost hedgerows

Did you know that it's estimated that we have lost around 150,000 km of hedgerows in the UK since the Second World War? This hasn’t just changed our landscape, it also affects plant life, animals and insects.

Hedges assist nature by providing:

• Shelter for flora and fauna (animal and plant life)

• Food for insects and birds through the development of blossom, nuts and berries

• Nesting sites for birds and bumblebees, the latter at the base of the hedge

• Enhances the quality of the soil. A hedge’s root systems can encourage a beneficial fungus for the soil called mycorrhizal fungi.

Wildlife uses hedgerows for shelter, food and nesting.

Why plant hedging in your garden?

Planting a hedge in your garden is a wonderful way to help nature as well as helping to fight climate change, by capturing and storing carbon.

Hedges also offer benefits to you and your garden. They reduce flooding risk, act as a windbreak, and if you want a bit more privacy in your garden, they can help with this as well!

How Greening Tetbury can help

If you are interested in planting a hedge in your garden, then Greening Tetbury can help:

• Help cover costs. We can cover or contribute to the cost of purchasing hedge plant (whips) for the hedgerow. Funding will be capped to a certain amount depending on the length of the hedge.

• Provide advice and guidance. We have experienced gardeners who can offer advice on the type of hedging that would be suitable for your garden, the best place to plant and how to maintain the hedge.

• Assist with planting. If you need a helping hand to plant the hedge, our volunteers are able to assist with digging and planting.

While the volunteers on this project are not professional gardeners, they have been planting hedges and trees in their own gardens for many years. They have also been working over the last couple of years with local landowners and farmers to plant hedging.

There’s no catch, we just want to help grow more hedges! We’ve set up this hedge planting initiative to support our wider work to build wildlife corridors. This project aims to create corridors for wildlife to travel safely between one green or woodland space and another.

Request our support with hedge planting

If you’d like us to support you in planting a hedge in your garden, then get in touch with us by emailing: greeningtetbury@gmail.com.

Please note that the planting season finishes at the end of March and restarts again in October. Support or work from Greening Tetbury is subject to our volunteers ‘availability.

Greening Tetbury helped to plant a hedgerow at Parks Farm, Tormarton, last year.

A couple of budding volunteers planted several saplings near Tetbury Goods Shed in 2025.