Edible Hedge Pack

Foraging is a good way of enjoying food for free, but all too often you find yourself struggling to reach the best fruit or dodging traffic down narrow country lanes. Wouldn't it be nice to just pop out into the back garden and pick some wild berries and nuts?

Here on the farm, we're used to being able to pop out and harvest food for free - whether we fancy a few mushrooms, nuts or some fruit, there is an abundance of free food available on our doorstep.

Planning an Edible Hedge

Just recently there seems to be even more “foraging mania!” Nowadays folk are not just into blackberries and damsons, but they are onto the nuts, the elderberries and the sloes. If you love making your own jam, syrups and hedgerow tipples why not plant an Edible Hedge? You can of course add a few edibles in amongst your existing hedge – YUM!

You’ll have blackthorn (for sloe gin), crab apple (for jelly), damson (for jam and a luscious homemade alternative to Ribena), dog rose (for rosehip syrup), elderberry (for flu-preventing syrups from the berries in autumn and delicious cordial from the flowers in spring), hazel (for cob nuts), cherry plum and wild pear (for jams, liqueurs and syrups).

These arrive as bare-root plants from November through until March which makes them a really inexpensive project, and they are extremely easy to plant. It’s certainly a much cheaper and more attractive way of creating a boundary than buying a fence or building a wall – if you don't have space for a long boundary hedge, how about screening a compost bin or marking a vegetable patch? In the Wiggly Garden we have a Wiggly Hedge separating the Wildflower Meadow from the Pond.