Healthy Hedgerows 4+

Healthy Hedgerows is a hedge survey app which, with just a handful of questions will place each hedge you survey in the lifecycle and give you instant management advice that will help them flourish.

Key features include:

- Record hedgerow surveys in a few easy steps.
- Receive tailored management advice for your hedgerows.
- Offline use - download a map region to record hedgerow surveys offline.
- Upload hedgerow surveys to your PTES web portal account; manage them as part of a farm management plan.
- Survey guidance - detailed instructions on how to record accurate data and get the best management advice.

Only healthy hedgerows can deliver their potential for on-farm practical benefits, environmental services and be spectacular lifelines for wildlife.

The structure and quality of hedgerows will always deteriorate if they are managed in the same way for too long, whether this is annual cutting at the same height, or not cutting at all. In fact, they are at their best when managed according to their lifecycle. Healthy Hedgerows helps you understand where a hedge is on this lifecycle, and so what management would benefit it in the coming years. It draws on both traditional hedge management knowledge and contemporary hedge research to provide you with the direct advice you need to maintain a healthy network of hedges, with all the benefits that brings.

Hedges have been with us since the bronze age, and persist thanks to an unbroken chain of care, management and periodic rejuvenation. Each hedge carefully managed from generation to generation, farmer to farmer, through the centuries. The privilege of caring for them, and the responsibility of ensuring they have a healthy future now falls to us.

We write the next chapter in the hedgerow history books, and Healthy Hedgerows is a tool for farmers and other land managers alike, to help make sure it’s a good one.

Healthy Hedgerows is part of the Close the Gap project, funded by the government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund. The fund is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency.

PTES, a UK conservation charity created in 1977, is ensuring a future for endangered species throughout the world. We protect some of our most threatened wildlife species and habitats, and provide practical conservation support through research, grant-aid, educational programmes, wildlife surveys, publications and public events. The data that we collect from this survey will give us an insight into the health of hedges nationwide and help guide our future conservation work.