Join us to survey Cornish hedges, their flora, fauna and historical value.
If you want to get more familiar with the Penwith landscape by looking at Cornish hedges on some of our local farms, we are doing 6 fun volunteer days using an adaptation of the ‘Hedge Importance Test’. To make the data as useful and relevant as possible, we’ve made a few slight changes.
All you need to do is let us know which days you’d like to join us. Andrew Cockshaw and Cherish Maxwell from CREST will tell you everything you need to know to look at the hedges and assess their value by recording their characteristics, special features, which indicator plant species are growing on them and what animals you can see evidence of or actually spot as you ramble around the fields. This is a rare opportunity to access private farms and see the landscape from a new perspective.
We’ll be embracing the winter, encouraging everyone to wrap up warm and bring their thermos as we take a good walk around several historic hedges on each farm. We’ll be sharing insights and stories from the farmers that tell us how these hedges were made, how they were used and any local folklore that feeds into our survey.
The data we collect will be shared with the Historic Environment Record, the Great Cornish Hedges survey, the farms we’re on and Cornwall National Landscapes. Where possible, we’ll be surveying the same hedges that were surveyed 14 years ago by a similar project to see if there have been any changes. See below for dates and locations. In the meantime, if you’d like to read up about hedges and learn a bit more about them, be sure to visit cornishhedges.co.uk for articles on most aspects of our hedges.
Select the volunteering events below for specific information or click the book here to join us.
Book here
