Permaculture: The dry hedge (also called the dead hedge or Benjes hedge) - How to achieve sustainable food production for increased profit and well-being

Name derived from the name of a German ecologist, Herman Benjes, who brought this technique and its interests back into fashion, which has probably been used for millennia.

The concept?

Let’s reintegrate dead wood into our gardens. It is invaluable and a source of life!

Stack horizontally on the ground, up to 1.5 meters high, cut branches, dead wood, twigs from our pruning / pruning between posts to keep them in a given space.

There is no rule for the length and shape of the set, it will depend on your goals.

The dry hedge can be as wide and long as a living hedge to serve as a border / delimitation between properties or agricultural plots over several tens of meters, thus breaking the prevailing winds or cold winds that enter your land.

But it can also be done only over two or three meters to separate spaces within the garden with various shapes or even aesthetic research by doing plessage.

This recycling of organic matter is what happens in nature, the plant / wood is returned and reabsorbed by the soil, thus giving it back its elements.

This process, which is recreated by the dry hedge, is an essential link in your garden’s food chain!

What are the interests of this hedge?

1. Free or Almost Free: No exterior materials (can be stakes / poles but can be thick branches / trunks)

2. Robust (prevents passage of wild boars) and durable

3. Easy to build (few tools) and to feed (any organic matter can be integrated, added on top)

4. Multiple interests for biodiversity (detailed below)!

5. Windproof effect thus creation of microclimate on the ground

6. Creation of protected areas suitable for the vegetable garden

7. Potential guardians for climbers

8. Creation of organic matter / humus, soil enrichment, protection against erosion

9. Recycling of “green waste” to create humus and refuge for wildlife

10. Potential for unlimited (or almost) storage of dead wood / branches thanks to its degradation.

So more disposal of “green waste” out of the garden for those who do.

11. Establishment of a local living hedge, free and spontaneous in the long term.

A dry hedge is an incredible biodiversity reservoir!

It represents an essential link in the food chain: microfauna – mesofauna – macrofauna

Many organisms are xylophagous (bacterial, microbial, fungal, invertebrate, arthropod) and are conditions for the installation of the rest of the food chain and for equilibrium

For insects:

50% of insects that live off dead wood are threatened. ) Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera …

– Breeding place (saproxylic insects)

-Feeding place (xylophagous insects, xylophagous hunters, arachnids etc.)

– Shelter for many insects

For amphibians:

– Shelter and hibernation area (newts & toads among others)

-Hunting area

-Hiding places

For birds:

– Bird hunting location (black & white-fronted redstart, familiar robin, wagtail, wren, tree pipit, among others)

– Hiding places or nesting places for birds: Eurasian Wren, familiar robin

For mammals:

– Hiding place, hunting, hibernation and reproduction for the hedgehog, weasel, marten, marten and many small mammals

For reptiles:

-Hunting fire, thermoregulation see reproduction for some lizards and snakes

It represents an ecological corridor and privileged circulation zones for fauna.

You will understand, an immense diversity of animals will quickly colonize this new place, both to feed, to reproduce, to hide, to rest, to move around.

A haven of peace and a terrifying hunting area for all these beautiful people at the same time.

By breaking the wind, the dry hedge will create a micro-climate that can be agradated depending on the orientation to the sun, we can thus create an ideal vegetable growing area and thus allow many foragers and flying insects to arrive thanks to the protection of the wind, see the allies of the gardeners nearby to free them from the excess number of slugs for example thanks to the presence of ground beetles or hedgehogs, or the lacewing for your aphids, all present in your dry hedge

CONCLUSION

During your next hedge trimmings (which must be done between September and March to preserve the nidifications at work during this period) or when maintaining your pollard trees, alignments, keep the branches cut and create a dry hedge to obtain all these benefits in the gardens.

👉A minimum, try to offer a small pile of dead wood in a corner of the garden to get some of the wildlife interests that have been mentioned!

Benjes Hedge High Resolution Stock Photography and Images - Alamy

Benje High Res Stock Images | Shutterstock

https://www.gardena.com/int/garden-life/garden-magazine/creating-a-benjes-hedge/

Hedges generally take on the function of a privacy shield or windbreak and serve to structure a garden. However, they can do more than this. With a Benjes hedge in your garden, you become the observer of a natural event – because the hedge, which consists of deadwood and other natural materials, transforms itself over the years into a thriving habitat for animals.

First we determine the location of the hedge. Here you can plant smaller trees and shrubs as natural “fence posts” at an appropriate distance to one another (approx. 2.5 metres). Between these, you place layers of cuttings from deciduous trees. The branches are layered approximately three metres wide and one metre high to form thicket barriers, then intertwined with each other and shaken. However, light and air should still be able to get to the ground so that germinating plants can still grow through them. In this way, the Benjes hedge provides an increasing amount of protection and habitat for animals as it develops – your active contribution towards environmental protection in your own garden.

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