Hedgerow /thicket /undergrowth/ covert/ scrub

Call it what you will, this kind of tangle of shrubs, bushes, saplings, creeping and climbing plants has an environmental value beyond all else. Some ecologists think that preserving and encouraging scrub should take precedence over planting trees. Why? Because a tree is a tree is a tree. Except it's not - a tree cannot thrive without the intimate involvement of microscopic fungi  in and among its  roots. Digging a hole and dropping in a tree doesn't supply this beneficial underground network, it takes year to develop. What is more, bringing trees from elsewhere may import pests and diseases too. But within scrub's  sheltering tangle trees can germinate and grow in situ, safe from grazing beasts - and destructive humanity. 

Dense thicket provides a  habitat and a source of food for countless small mammals, birds, bees and invertebrates. In spring the bushes  host nesting birds, in summer bees and butterflies cluster around the flowers and in autumn it's a larder of berries. Traditionally we humans picked hazel nuts and blackberries, maybe hips and haws and sloes too, so we valued hedgerows and thicket. But now it's more often regarded as messy and unsightly, an eyesore or a hazard, something to be torn up and replaced with a neat fence or a tidy lawn, or built upon. We should be treasuring our patches of scrub and allowing them to spread, to shelter wildlife, and to act as tree nurseries. Rewilding has become a buzz word that makes us think of wolves and beavers roaming the woods and the waterways but it can be as simple as letting the end of your garden or the edge of the park run wild.