Each year at Nurture Ecology, we like to spend a day using our time, equipment and conservation skills to give back to our Island.
Hedgerows make great wildlife corridors, which allow wildlife to disperse throughout the countryside. Hedgerows are particularly important for bats, which not only use them for foraging but as a linear corridors between their roosts and nearby foraging, roosting or mating sites.
On the 30th March, the whole team spent the day planting a native hedgerow along a field boundary in St Peter, to connect a known bat roost with St Peter’s Valley Woodland. Despite the heavy rain, spirits were high and we successfully planted 250 metres of hedging, complete with canes for support and biodegradable plastic spirals. We chose to plant a mix of native species including hawthorn, filed maple and hazel, which will attract insects and also provide a dense and thick hedgerow that provides shelter for wildlife.
We hope that the hedgerow will mature to create a wildlife corridor that is not only used by bats but also birds, small mammals and amphibians.