Hedging your bets (or betting your hedges)

The Dogwood family has many members some of which grow on practically every continent on earth. They can range form entirely insignificant to stunning beautiful and from very small to decent sized trees.

Telling a dogwood is easy (provided it is in leaf).  Look for plants that are generally shrubby and that have spear-head shaped leaves. Take a leaf and gently pull it “across the grain” (so you are pulling the tip of the leaf directly away from the stalk.  Just as it splits, look to see if the veins in the leaf remain unbroken - they look like threads bridging the gap.  If they do, you have a dogwood.

The likelihood is that water becomes increasingly scarce. The weather may feel wetter, but as we build more (and we do) the area of land covered by housing, roads and industrial estates stops being “porous” and instead is drained into reservoirs or straight into the sea. Therefore less water is absorbed by mother earth each year making the ground drier….. If your water is metered, that makes your life more expensive and if there is a hosepipe ban natural reserves of water may be inadequate to support your plants.

Did you know…. why there are (relatively) so few species of tree in Europe when compared to North America? 

European mountains go the wrong way… during an ice age, when ice sheets spread southwards, if the mountain ranges mainly run North/South then it is easier for trees to seed themselves away from the oncoming ice.  In North America the giant ranges run North/South unlike Europe where most mountain ranges run roughly East/West and so trees in Europe were caught (literally) between a rock and a hard place.

This an excellent recipe which can be adapted to accommodate almost any hedge (and its fruit).  Please remember to check that something is safe (if you are not sure) before cooking and eating it….. With the exception of Elderberries (you can buy Elder trees seperately from us at Sambucus nigra), all the plants that produce the berries in this recipe are likely to be in a pack of Conservation Hedge Mix hedging.

Ingredients