Hedgerow Heroes:
Call for hedge sites 2026/27

​Hedge creation on farms, smallholdings and community sites

 

Are you a landowner wanting a new native-species hedgerow on your land this winter?

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CPRE Shropshire's Hedgerow Heroes project can provide free native whips, canes/guards (if required) and volunteer planters to come and do the work. We bring all our own tools. 

The volunteers are guided by an experienced volunteer lead. Many of our volunteers are also experienced planters.

 

We are keen to plant hedgerows on working farms and smallholdings.

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This is the sixth year of the Hedgerow Project in Shropshire.

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​Please get in touch as soon as possible if you are interested so we can arrange to visit your site over the summer months.

 

We do have criteria and boundaries:

 

• We cannot fund or provide fencing and the landowner would be responsible for this if it’s required. All new hedgerows must be fenced from livestock once planted (this can be electric fencing).

• We cannot plant on roadsides due to our PL insurance

• Sites must be safe for volunteers, ideally with parking nearby

• Ideally hedge sites should be visible from rights of way/roads/tracks/community areas (desirable, not essential) for maximum public benefit

• Hedges must connect up with other good habitat – meadows, grassland, ponds, woodland, copses, other hedges.

• We can also plant small copses where suitable

• We encourage the planting of hedgerow trees and/or fruit trees within the hedgerow

• We are interested in sites where the landowner will manage the hedge sensitively going forward, so ideally letting up to lay/coppice or incremental trim regime and where possible letting hedgerow trees flourish.

• If sites are not safe for volunteers to plant or owners wish to plant the hedgerow themselves it is also possible for us to give whips/guards in suitable circumstances.

• We cannot fund hedgelaying or coppicing as a rule but we are happy to consider gapping up once a gappy hedge has been laid or coppiced.

 

The process/timeline is as follows (as at July 2026):

 

• Call for sites (open now)

• Farmers/landowners get in touch

• We send out a short questionnaire (or we can go over this on the phone – takes 5/10 mins). This is fact-gathering for us. A copy of the questionnaire can be downloaded here. (please complete and email to Sarah on admin@cpreshropshire.org.uk) 

• If all’s well we send someone out on to site to meet with landowner and look at/assess site over the summer months

• We let the landowner know if successful or not by late Sept/early Oct

• Before the site is planted, we send a simple landowner agreement for the farmer to sign. We can provide sight of this in advance if necessary. It asks the landowner to look after the hedge to the best of their ability, gap up losses etc in future

• We come and plant between Dec and end Feb

  

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