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What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge

knowablemagazine.org

11–20 of 82 posts

Re: What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge

#11
post #9

To frame this in a different way, how would woodland areas (or what the article is calling hedgerows) work before the Enclosure Movement? Would there have been more diversity? A different approach to agriculture? I find this article a bit odd in it's approach (although supportive of more hedgerow area) and in inquiry of where the concept of hedgerows came from.

Hedgerows pre-date the enclosure act by centuries, land has always been demarcated. The enclosure act relates to the takeover of common land.

Thanks for clarifying, didn't know that.

Re: What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge

#14
post #3

My brain is apparently poisoned, I thought for sure this was about financial hedging, or maybe brexit as a hedge against the rest of Europe, or some other political-economy hot-take garbage. Anyways, glad it's about plants. Happy Thanksgiving, all!

>Anyways, glad it's about plants. confused me, what with there being nothing about foreign agents being used to manipulate the media, but then I realized it was about vegetative matter. :)

> then I realized it was about vegetative matter

Manipulating vegetative matter into homogeneous shapes. Not entirely dissimilar then?

On topic... While we still have a lot, we have also lost a lot of our hedgerows to commercial farming practices. So Britain aren't exactly great examples either. These are supposedly insect habitats - insects which have all but vanished in recent years which will no doubt have a large ecological impact.

Re: What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge

#15
post #3

My brain is apparently poisoned, I thought for sure this was about financial hedging, or maybe brexit as a hedge against the rest of Europe, or some other political-economy hot-take garbage. Anyways, glad it's about plants. Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Yeah. I thought Britian bought a lot of BTC to hedge against inflation.

Re: What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge

#19
Worth watching the short video embedded in the article to get an idea of what these hegerows look like in practice. The illustration makes them look like standard manicured garden hedges rather than the reality of impenetrable intertwined masses of different species. [edited to fix a typo]

Re: What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge

#20

How unique is this to Britain? Do other countries have similar hedge density?

when flying in to Gatwick (LGW) from MUC 10 yrs ago, the land looked like an image of microscopic cell structures – the hedges were omnipresent. Bavaria knocked down most hedges in the 70ies during "land consolidation" to optimise agricultural land for industrial cultivation:

Coherent and larger patches per owner, rectangular, enterable.

Land here seen from above looks tiled. Not cells.

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