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Elder in a chalk hedgerow: coppicing an overgrown section back into shape

Elder (Sambucus nigra) is native to the chalk downland of southern England and is one of the most common shrubs in the mixed field-boundary hedges around Shepherdswell, Barfrestone and Coldred. It earns its place: the flowers in June carry hundreds of insects, and the berries in September and October are taken by blackbirds, thrushes and garden warblers on their way south. But elder is also one of the fastest-growing plants in a British hedgerow, and one of the most disruptive if it is left to grow unchecked. Here is what a section of field hedge looks like when elder has been allowed to do exactly that, what it looks like once the elder has been coppiced back and the surrounding hedge has had three years to recover, and the late-winter method that turns one into the other.

Before

A run of elder in a North Downs farmland boundary hedge that has not been managed separately from the rest of the hedge for ten or fifteen years looks, in the first instance, like a gap in a hedge rather than a problem with a particular plant. The surrounding hawthorn and blackthorn are at working height: 1.8-2 metres, laid or machine-trimmed, stock-proof or close to it. The elder section is something entirely different. It has risen to 4, 5, sometimes 6 metres on the thick chalk rubble soils between Shepherdswell and Barfrestone. The main stems are woody and barked, several at 8-12 centimetres diameter at the base. The canopy spreads laterally, overtopping the neighbouring hawthorn by 2-3 metres on each side and shading the hedge for 3-4 metres either side of the elder stems. Beneath the elder, where the shade is heaviest, the hedge has thinned: the hawthorn and blackthorn that used to fill that section have drawn upward, reaching for light, and the base of the hedge in the elder's shadow has gapped. You can see daylight through the lower half of the boundary at ground level for several metres. The elder itself, despite its height, is not dense at the base: only the upper canopy carries leaf, flower and berry. The lower 2-3 metres of each stem is bare bark, the classic result of a plant that has been competing for light and investing everything in growing upward rather than thickening at the sides. In winter, when the elder has dropped its leaves, the contrast is stark: a tall, bare-limbed structure over a thin, gapped hedge.

After

Three growing seasons after a properly timed coppice cut, the same section of boundary looks nothing like what it was. The elder is still present: it has grown back vigorously from the cut stool, as it always does. But instead of three or four massive woody stems reaching 5 metres, the elder now consists of twelve to twenty slender upright shoots at 1.5-2 metres, sitting at the same height as the rest of the hedge. The surrounding hawthorn and blackthorn, released from years of shade, have responded with strong lateral growth in the first two seasons: the gap that the elder's canopy had created is filled in again. At the base of the hedge, where the ground was visible between the stems before the cut, there is now a continuous low thicket of young hawthorn laterals and elder suckers, exactly the kind of dense base cover that makes a field boundary hedge stockproof and useful to ground-nesting birds. The berries are better too: a coppiced elder flowers and fruits more heavily on its young growth than an old, tall specimen in the shade of its own canopy. In June, the flat-topped white flower heads are at eye level across the whole section rather than visible only far above you.

What happened in between

Elder tolerates being cut to ground level better than almost any other woody plant in a UK hedgerow. It regenerates vigorously from the root system, and a cut that would kill a hawthorn or blackthorn completely will simply reset an elder to its starting point. This quality, which makes elder so resilient to damage, also makes coppicing the correct intervention when it has overgrown its section of hedge. The other options, lifting the surrounding hedge to meet the elder, or removing the elder entirely, are both worse: the first destroys the structure of the boundary, the second removes a genuinely valuable native plant and creates a gap that takes years to close.

1. First: identify what you have. Before cutting, establish whether the elder is a single plant with multiple stems from one root, or several separate seedlings that have established close together. A single plant with a shared root system will come back as a dense multi-stem coppice from one stool. Several separate plants will produce multiple stools and may regenerate faster and more thickly. Either is manageable. Also check the surrounding hedge: if the hawthorn immediately alongside the elder has died completely rather than merely thinned, it will need gap-planting with new bare-root stock in the autumn following the elder coppice; a gap-planted hawthorn whip will establish well in the light and space once the elder is cut back.
2. Late January or early February: the coppice cut. Cut every elder stem as close to the ground as the saw will reach, ideally 5-10 centimetres above soil level. A bowsaw or a reciprocating saw handles stems up to 8-10 centimetres diameter without difficulty. For thicker stems, a chainsaw is faster but the short height above ground makes it awkward; a large-toothed handsaw is more controllable at ground level. Cut clean across the stem, no ragged splits. If you are coppicing an elder that is growing at the base of a laid section of hedge, take care not to disturb the laid stems of the surrounding hawthorn: elder often grows through and behind laid pleachers, and the two become entangled at the base.
3. Dispose of the arisings carefully. Elder stems are pithy, lightweight and bulky. A mature elder cut to the ground produces a surprisingly large volume of material: 5-7 metres of main stem, plus the side branches, plus the current season's young growth. Elder does not make useful firewood as the pithy stems burn poorly and produce little heat. It will compost down well in a heap after a season. The berries, if any remain from the previous autumn, and the seeds in the fallen leaf litter, will germinate readily if left on bare soil. Chip or compost the arisings rather than leaving them piled alongside the hedge, where the stems will re-root where they touch the ground.
4. The first growing season: leave it alone. Elder pushes new growth from the cut stool almost as soon as the soil warms in March. By April the new stems are already 30-50 centimetres tall and growing fast: in a good season elder coppice regrowth can reach 1.5-2 metres by October of the first year. Do not trim or top the regrowth in the first growing season. The plant is rebuilding its root reserves after the cut, and premature trimming reduces the vigour of the response. If the new growth is very dense at the base of the stool, you can thin it lightly in July by removing the weakest stems, leaving 8-12 of the strongest to develop, but this is a refinement rather than a necessity.
5. The second and third growing seasons: managing into the hedge. From the second growing season the elder regrowth will be tall enough to start managing in line with the rest of the boundary. Trim it in the same late-summer cut as the surrounding hawthorn: late August or early September, once the berries are fully formed (early trimming removes the berry crop before the birds can take it). Shape the elder into the general hedge line: cut the face hard, but leave the top at hedge height rather than cutting it flat to an arbitrary height. The elder will continue to push vigorous new growth each year, and the annual late-summer cut keeps it in proportion without requiring another full coppice for 8-10 years.
6. Gap-planting alongside. If the elder's years of shade have killed hawthorn in the hedge on either side, plant bareroot hawthorn or blackthorn whips into the gaps in the autumn following the coppice cut: late November to late February while the ground is workable. A single row of mixed whips at 30 centimetre spacing, planted to 45-60 centimetres depth in the chalk, protected with a spiral rabbit guard and a cane, establishes readily in the open conditions once the elder shade is removed. By year three the planted whips will have merged with the recovering elder coppice and the gap will have closed.

Elder on chalk: why it does so well here

Elder is one of the few British hedgerow plants that actively prefers disturbed, nutrient-enriched soils, which is why it is so common along field boundaries and beside farm tracks and gateways. The chalk downland soils around Shepherdswell and Coldred are generally thin and low in fertility, but the base of a field hedge accumulates organic matter over decades: dead plant material, leaf fall, animal droppings and the thatch of old grass growth. This layer, sitting on top of the chalk rubble, provides exactly the kind of relatively moist, nitrogen-rich conditions that elder colonises rapidly. The same conditions can be found in the patches of scrub along the Miner's Way Trail and on the chalk banks between Shepherdswell and Eythorne. Elder is also able to root in very shallow soil: it will establish in 10-15 centimetres of topsoil over chalk rubble where many plants would struggle.

The pithy, hollow stems of elder are used by solitary bees as nesting sites, particularly by the pith-nesting mason bee species that are active in May and June. If you are coppicing an elder stool and find that old cut stems from a previous coppice are occupied by small bee nests in the pith, leave those old stems in place or move them to the edge of the hedge rather than composting them immediately.

One management note specific to chalk: elder spreads by both root suckering and by seed dropped from bird-dispersed berries. On the thin chalk soils with short grass around Shepherdswell, elder seeds germinate readily in any area of disturbed ground. If you are coppicing an elder stool in a farmland hedge, clear up fallen berries from previous seasons from the nearby ground if possible, to reduce the seedling pressure in the following spring. Elder seedlings are easy to pull when small, but become woody quickly.

Sources: RHS, "Sambucus: grow your own elder", growing guide (rhs.org.uk/plants/sambucus/growing-guide); Woodland Trust, "Elder" species profile (woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-british-trees/elder/); Ashridge Trees, "Cutting back overgrown elderflower in a mixed hedge" (ashridgetrees.co.uk/blogs/hedging/cutting-back-overgrown-elderflower-in-a-mixed-hedge/); The Wildlife Trusts, "Hedgerow" habitat guide (wildlifetrusts.org/habitats/farmland/hedgerow); Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1.