Plan natural hedge and create it correctly - planting plan, care and important tips

How to create a wild hedge

A natural hedge not only serves as a habitat for birds, small mammals, insects and beetles, but also provides us with fruit rich in vitamins. Such hedges also contain traditional medicinal plants. That's why it would be a pity if you destroy the potential of your garden with monotonous cherry laurels.

contents

• How to create a wild hedge
• A miniature reserve
• You can cut natural hedges?
• Building a natural hedge
• maintenance
• poisonous plants
• Nutrients and medicinal plants
• The planting trench
• Distances of the plants
• When to cut?
• Ideal hedge plants
• Native woody plants with different blooms
• The sloe flower stalk
• Wurzelkriechpionier
• 3. Black elderberry
• Hollerwein and flower syrup
• Vitamins and minerals
• 4. Cornelian cherry
• A bitter pleasure
• 5. Barberry
• vitamin C
• 6. Witch hazel
• 7. Ordinary rock pear
• From food to jewelry
• 8. Hawthorn
• The daily bread of the caterpillars
• Other hedge plants
• Thorny-dominant animal paradise
• Set limits

A miniature reserve

A natural hedge offers nesting sites for numerous bird species - from warblers to wrens, from robins to flycatchers, from song thrushes to fitis. At the bottom of the hedge, hedgehogs and mice feel just as at home as mountain and pond newts, common toads and slow-moving stalks. Wild bees find food on the flowers, as well as wild bumblebees, beetles and spiders.

A natural hedge provides habitat for numerous species of animals. (Image: Sonja Birkelbach / fotolia.com)

The leaves can rot just below the hedge and so ensures in the winter that newts and mice find a shelter. Species that hunt in a natural hedge include shrews, dormants, dormice and dwarf mice, mouse weasels, bats, red-backed shrikes, gold-eaters, book and green-finches, hedgerows, and many others.

You can cut natural hedges?

A prejudice to natural hedges, unlike conifers, cherry laurels or rhododendrons, is that they can not be cut. The opposite is the case. Hedges with indigenous plants easily tolerate annual pruning, and that can even be radical. They can be cut exactly as well as conifer hedge.

Building a natural hedge

You should not just plant a natural hedge, but create the individual plants as a snake line and also enhance the spatial effect by planting in three levels: the lowest plants are in front, the middle sized in the middle and the highest behind.

The ratio of high to low growing plants should be 1 to 2, the ratio of light to shade loving at 1 to 1. On the ground they plant groundcover and / or mulch with bark mulch, leaves and compost.

Be sure to use almost indigenous woody plants. In other words, you can also use certain neophytes that give food to animals, but only those. For example, there is nothing wrong with integrating a number of sunflowers.

Pay attention to the soil conditions: For damp soils, for example, alder or buckthorn tree, sea buckthorn or rock pear, however, like it dry.

Prefer flowering shrubs that produce fruits. These include pear, cornel or barberry, Brom-, Him- apple or currant. The flowers provide food for insects, the fruits feed birds, small mammals and ourselves.

Make sure that the flowering times are spread over the year. First of all, you ensure a continuous bee pasture and, secondly, enjoy the blossoms throughout.

For a natural hedge, flowering shrubs, such as the cornelian cherry, are very suitable. (Image: Heike Rau / fotolia.com)

Plan fast-growing deciduous trees at mid-height. They ensure that the hedge becomes stable and provide it with strong trunks scaffolding. In addition, robust nesting possibilities develop here, even for larger birds.

Plant shrubs that grow at a similar speed.

maintenance

A natural hedge should rejuvenate you from the fourth year. To do this, cut out old shoots without injuring young shoots. This is how the young shoots can unfold. Make sure that there are no holes in the hedge, this looks ugly and the hedge grows irregular.

Did you plant in several rows? Then cut the front strip in one year, the back strip the next year, and start again in the third year.

poisonous plants

This is about children and pets, less about wild animals. If your children are snacking on the fruits, you should either keep plants that are toxic to humans out of the hedge or educate the children at an early age.

In a natural hedge, for example, this applies to the Pfaffenhütchen. Birds are valuable food, and for humans the berries are poisonous. Other aviaries contain poisonous leaves, flowers, bark, seeds or roots, such as boxwood and yew.

Nutrients and medicinal plants

Some hedge plants, on the other hand, are not only edible but even suitable as medicinal plants. Salweide contains aspirin, elderberry, sea buckthorn and hawthorn are home remedies for fevers, infections, gastrointestinal problems and pain.

From the leaves, flowers or fruits can be prepared teas.

The Salweide contains the raw material of aspirin and is therefore considered a proven medicinal plant for pain. (Image: M. Schuppich / fotolia.com)

The planting trench

Are you restoring the hedge? Then you first lift a plant trench. This should be twice as wide and deep as the root ball of the plants. You can mix the soil with compost.

Now spread the trees in the trench, fill in the soil and apply it well. Plant at the same height as in the nursery and cover the soil around the roots with bark mulch so that it does not dry out.

Distances of the plants

For the distances applies: At a height of 40 cm 4 to 5 plants per meter, up to 60 cm 3 to 4 plants, up to 100 cm 2 to 3. From 100 to 200 cm, 1 to 2 plants per meter should be set.

When to cut?

Hedgerows are best cut in autumn and winter, definitely not between the end of April and mid-June, because then the birds are in the breeding season and in the worst case you destroy the nests and drive off the young birds from the offspring.

Cut better trapezoidal with about 20 cm deviation than straight row - so more light comes into the hedge.

Ideal hedge plants

For a natural hedge you can first make a hike in the vicinity of the future planting and get an overview of what trees grow here of course. The emphasis is on course: The thuja hedge of her neighbor is not.

Pay attention to the cardinal directions, to light and shadow. Does hawthorn grow north near its shrubs? Then he will probably also thrive in her hedge on the north side.

Observe which animals drive which plants in the vicinity of their hedge. With the appropriate plants you will also lure them into their bushes. Thus, a single juniper shrub can decide whether or not a bloodthirsty is present in their garden.

You are not a plant expert? Take a guide to hand when exploring the area or taking pictures of the plants. You can then show them to experts from the NABU or discuss them on forums of natural gardeners.

Unknown plants can be photographed and then identify with the help of a determination book. (Image: santypan / fotolia.com)

Native woody plants with different blooms

1) Common snowball
It's so called because its large white inflorescences remind of a snowball, blooms from May to June and decorates the garden in the fall with red fruits. It grows fast, gets 2 to 4 meters high and can be cut very well.

2) sloe
It should not be missing in any natural garden. The shrub grows up to four meters high and grows slowly. It provides us with fruits that can be processed into jam.

Flowers, barks and fruits reduce fever, inhibit inflammation, drive the urine and have a laxative effect. They relieve bladder, kidney and stomach discomfort. Tenched juice speeds recovery after infectious diseases.

The immature fruit can be inserted, the ripe fruits can be used for fruit juices, fruit wines and liqueurs.

For animals, blackthorn is one of the most important domestic plants. The larvae of several endangered butterflies depend on the leaves of the plant, and countless butterflies feed on the flowers, including the endangered scarlet feeder.

The black-and-black blackthorn berries serve as food for many native bird species. (Image: Berty / fotolia.com)

The sloe flower stalk

Amongst the beetles that visit the blackthorn is the rare golden rose beetle, and the sloe flower stingers even feed exclusively on the plant. In addition, there are about 20 species of wild bees that consume the pollen and nectar. The fruits provide food for nearly two dozen native species of birds, such as various tits and warblers. Red-backed shrikes and predatory warblers spit on their prey on the long spines.

Wurzelkriechpionier

Caution: Blackthorn is a root creep pioneer. The roots expand and drive saplings, which spread throughout the garden and displace less robust plants. It's best to use a root barrier for the sloe, a foil that keeps the growth of the roots in check.

3. Black elderberry

The black elder is one of the Must Be's in the natural hedge. At least 40 species of birds eat its berries, including rarities such as Bluethroat, Whinchat and Great Reed Warbler, as well as the typical garden birds such as chaffinch, great tit or robin. Jays love the fruits as well as green woodpeckers, doves like grosbeaks, willow tails like song thrushes, wrens like wood warblers.

All these birds spread the elderberry seeds with their feces, and if you want to see something else grow in their garden other than elderberry, then you must regularly tear out the sprouts.

Hollerwein and flower syrup

The flowers make elderflower syrup, which is diluted with water, provides first-class refreshment in the summer, gives cocktails the whiff and is ideal for ice cream and dessert sauces.

The fruits are only cooked enjoyable for people, they are good for jams, elderberry juice, elderberry (elder wine), elderberry liqueur, but also as an ingredient to deer, deer, wild boar and pheasant. Dried elderflowers make a tea that works well to prevent colds.

Vitamins and minerals

Elderberry provides vitamins and minerals to a high degree: vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6 and C, as well as potassium, phosphorus, calcium, sodium and iron, saponins and tannins.

Black elderberry proliferates. In the positive this means: After a few years, you have a dense hedge of tough wood. The downside: They have to cut elderberries more often than other plants.

The fruits of the black elderberry contain a lot of vitamins and minerals. (Image: M. Schuppich / fotolia.com)

4. Cornelian cherry

The Cornelian is the opposite of the elderberry - at least in terms of growth. It grows slowly, but reaches over the decades up to eight meters in height. The dogwood plant is a premature flowering plant: the bees supply it with nectar already in March, and we humans enjoy it with a wealth of golden-yellow flowers in the middle of the largely bare garden.

Once planted, the plant is firstly undemanding and, secondly, it defies diseases, pests and heat. However, she loves warmth and calcareous soils - in nature she is typical of the undergrowth of dense forests, forest clearings and the edge of the forest. There it shares its habitat with willow, wild roses, ivy, honeysuckle, hornbeam and hazelnut, and these also make ideal co-plants in a cornelian hedge.

A bitter pleasure

Like elder and blackthorn, the cornelian cherry is an "all-rounder": insects love the flowers, they support the hedge, birds eat the fruits, and these are also delicious for humans. Cornelian cherries are indeed "out of fashion", but their taste does not detract. The fruits taste fine sour, can be eaten raw, boil tea, use for jellies; they season wild sauces and desserts. In September the fruits are ripe.
The plant has a very hard wood, so there is no biting damage by deer or deer.

5. Barberry

Barberry is particularly suitable to keep out human intruders (but also dogs etc.), for example under a window. The sourthorn, as a German name, not only has sour fruits, but also painful thorns.

The low to medium shrubs are a bird's paradise for both reasons: here, as in blackberry, seabuckthorn, hawthorn or blackthorn, birds like to raise their young, as predators like cats or martens injure their paws on the thorns.

The wood of the shrub is brittle and white-yellow-brown color, the small flowers shine money; in most forms of barberry the leaves are green and turn yellow and red in autumn; some species have blood red leaves.

The flowers are an excellent insect pasture, and birds are crazy about the berries. Barberry fits visually and from the claims her best to hawthorn, hawthorn and blackthorn.

vitamin C

The berries of the barberry can be dried and cooked as a tea, to accompany wild game, couscous, rice and chicken, the flavor complements with almonds, nuts, sweet potatoes and dark chocolate.

They contain lots of vitamin C, as well as apple and citric acid and potassium, cleanse the stomach, act as a sweat and help against infections and toothache.

The healing berries of the barberry can be used for toothache and infections. (Image: lepatriote / fotolia.com)

6. Witch hazel

The witch hazel ensures in winter for flowers, because the wine-red flowers unfold in January and February. Witch hazel does not need a conservation cut.

7. Ordinary rock pear

The ordinary rock pear is the only one of its kind that originally comes from Europe. It is an important food plant for the caterpillars of the rare mourning trolley and the equally rare orchard flower spanner. Under the butterflies itself, the green hairstyle nourishes itself on the nectar.

For a hedge, the rock pear is excellent, both ecologically and culinary and equally aesthetic. As the seasons change, it offers a white sea of ​​star-shaped flowers in April / May, sweet fruits in June and colorful leaves in autumn. Tip: The white flowers and green leaves complement each other well with blue oysters.

The height of 1 to 4 m with a very dense network of twigs makes it an ideal hedgerow, even for front gardens. The leaves are green in summer, yellow to orange and red in autumn.

From food to jewelry

Today, pear trees serve as ornamental shrubs, they were previously grown exclusively as a fruit carrier. The fruits are ripe in June, color and taste reminiscent of blueberries. The fruit is full of vitamins, minerals and tannic acid.

The wild rock pear grows in mountains and there on dry hangers, on semi-dry grasslands and sparse oak or pine forests, also on limestone and rock. The common rock pear for 500 years a cultivated plant, its origin as a hard chunk on nutrient-poor soils, it owes meanwhile a great resistance to the classical garden pests.

8. Hawthorn

Hawthorn naturally occurs in Europe in several species and prefers temperate climates. These are deciduous shrubs that branch densely and protect themselves with a variety of thorns.

The bark is greenish brown and scaly, the wood heavy and hard. The leaves are bay, the flowers white, sometimes pink. In autumn, the hawthorn bears red fruits, which may also be blue, black or yellow in some varieties. They are hardly suitable for direct consumption, mostly they are floury.

Although the shrub loves the sun, but also grows in partial shade, in nature it forms the underground of light forests and clearings, is also a typical plant of the forest edge. The individual plants can reach the age of 500 years.

The hawthorn is ideal for a natural hedge. (Image: M. Schuppich / fotolia.com)

The daily bread of the caterpillars

Hawthorn flowers in May and June. In August, the fruits appear and hang until the spring. They feed a variety of bird species, in addition to the mountain ash, hawthorn is the most important bird zootechny in Germany. In addition, the caterpillars of 54 butterflies eat on the plants.

The fruits contain a lot of vitamins and can be processed into compote, jam, juice and syrup. The dried pulp gives a kind of "flour" that can be used well in bread and gives it a distinctive taste that not all like.

In medicine, hawthorn tea made from leaves, flowers and fruits serves as a remedy for disturbances of the cardiovascular system.

The plant looks beautiful, so it is often found in gardens and parks. For a natural hedge, please make sure that it is the native single- or Zweigriffeligen hawthorn and not a breeding form with filled flowers. They look nice, but are of no use to insects.

As a hedge plant, the shrub has almost only advantages. He cuts well, grows fast and does not mind radical editing. The basis of life for 150 insect and 30 songbird species is one of the most ecologically important plants in Germany.

Other hedge plants

Other indigenous plants that are well suited to natural hedges are prawn hats (beware of children, the fruits are poisonous to humans), the rowanberry with healthy fruits known as rowanberry, the bird's and honeysuckle, the wild and dog rose and a number of berries: blackberry, raspberry, gooseberry, red and blackcurrant.

The berries not only taste good, they are all first-rate nectar and pollen donors - the endangered bees and bumblebees will thank them for their cultivation.
However, caution is advised: raspberries and blackberries are flat-rooters that expand under the ground and sprout from various spots on the ground. After a few years, wild gardens often consist of wild blackberries.

Thorny-dominant animal paradise

The spines make the walk through the garden a pain test, and the dominance of blackberries rapidly reduces biodiversity. However, the berries are not an ecological poison such as the cherry laurel, but for birds, small mammals and insects a land of milk and honey: Hedgehog, robins and wrens nest their nests in the protection of thorns, butterflies, bees and bumblebees to the flowers, dormouse and dormouse on the berries.

Set limits

In order to keep the wild blackberries in check, it is advisable to limit the roots. For this they put a tarp of about 2 mm thick about 60 cm deep into the ground and frame it with the plant.

Last but not least, in any hedge the hazelnut should be missing. The squirrels will thank them, as well as the jays, and the rare dormouse even bears its name from the walnut tree. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)

swell
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