← All guides · Farmland boundaries · September 2026

Managing ivy in a farmland hedgerow: before and after

Common ivy (Hedera helix) is native, genuinely useful to wildlife, and present in almost every chalk downland hedgerow around Shepherdswell and Coldred. The question is not whether to have it but how much. Here is what a hedgerow looks like when ivy has been allowed to take over the hedge structure, what the same boundary looks like once the ivy stems have been cut back, and the method for getting from one to the other without losing the ecological value ivy genuinely provides.

Before

Picture a farmland boundary hedge on a slope with about 30 metres where the lower two-thirds of the hedge is solid ivy. The hawthorn and blackthorn trunks are there underneath, but you would not know it from the field side. The hedge base is a continuous curtain of dark-green ivy from the ground up to roughly 1.8 metres, with woody ivy stems climbing the main hedge stems and spreading across the ground below. Above that point, where the hawthorn canopy is dense enough to shade out the ivy, the hedge is fine. Below it, in the section where light is already limited, the ivy has taken over. Where the odd gap appears in the hedge line, ivy rather than hawthorn regrowth fills it. The hedge is still there, but the ivy is winning.

After

Three months after cutting the main ivy stems through at the base, the same hedge would typically show the hawthorn and blackthorn trunks clear and visible again. The dead ivy above the cuts collapses and drops off the lower stems. Some bark damage may be visible, but hawthorn is resilient: within the following growing season, new growth typically appears from the base of the hedge in the sections that were most heavily shaded. Ivy is still present in the bank itself and as a mat at ground level on the field side, but it is no longer climbing the hedge structure. The boundary is a hawthorn-blackthorn hedgerow again, rather than an ivy-covered mass with some hedge stems in it.

What happens in between

The method is straightforward: sever the climbing ivy stems at the base and let the upper growth die back on its own. The complication is knowing what to leave and what to cut, since ivy in a bank is not the same problem as ivy climbing a hedge stem. Here is the sequence I follow:

1. Walk the hedge and distinguish bank ivy from climbing ivy. Ivy growing along the bank at ground level, or sitting in the base of the hedge as a groundcover, is doing no harm and should be left. The ivy to manage is the climbing growth, specifically stems that have got themselves onto the main hawthorn or blackthorn trunks and are working their way up through the lower canopy. On a long-established infestation these climbing stems will be thick and woody, sometimes as large as a small tree branch.
2. Find the main climbing stems at the base of the hedge. On a mature infestation there may be half a dozen to twenty or more separate stems coming up from the ground into the hedge frame over a 10-metre run. These will need loppers for anything under about 3 centimetres, and a pruning saw for thicker stems. Cut each one cleanly, roughly 30 centimetres above ground level, leaving a short stub rather than cutting flush. The stub makes it easy to spot and cut any regrowth in the first season after the work.
3. Pull the cut stems away from the lower section of the hedge. You can do this in the same session, working from the ground up as far as you can reach. Pulling the lower sections of dead stem free speeds up the collapse of the upper growth and lets you see the hedge structure underneath. Some sections will be too tangled to clear in one go; leave them and come back once the upper growth has fully died back in four to six weeks.
4. Leave the dead ivy to collapse before clearing the remainder. Dead ivy above a severed stem becomes dry and brittle within about four to six weeks and can then be pulled clear more easily. Once it is clearly dry, rake and pull the dead material off the hedge stems and out from the base. This improves airflow at the base of the hedge and removes the bulk that can hold damp against the stems through winter.
5. Do not attempt to dig out the roots immediately. The roots will die once the climbing stems are cut. In the first growing season after the work, check the stump area for new shoots coming from the root. Cut any you find before they reach 30 centimetres. After two growing seasons of that, the original root system is usually not regrowth-capable and the job is done.
6. Leave the bank ivy and the ground-level cover. The ivy growing in the hedge bank, on the bank side and along the base, should stay. It is not the problem and removing it would lose genuine wildlife value for no benefit to the hedge. See the section below on what ivy actually contributes.

The wildlife case for leaving some ivy

Ivy gets a poor reputation in some gardening contexts, but in a chalk downland hedgerow it earns its place. The flowers, which open in October and November when almost nothing else in flower is accessible to pollinators, provide late-season nectar at the point in the year when it is hardest to find. The ivy bee (Colletes hederae), a solitary bee whose flight season coincides almost exactly with ivy flowering, is a specialist species that collects ivy pollen almost exclusively: it has been expanding its range on the North Downs and across Kent since it first established here. The berries ripen through December and into February and are eaten by blackbirds, fieldfares and redwings passing through the downland between Lydden and Barfrestone. The dense evergreen growth provides year-round roosting cover that a deciduous hedge cannot provide through winter.

None of this is an argument for letting ivy dominate a hedge structure. It is an argument for a managed balance: cut the climbing growth that is threatening the hedge framework, leave the ground-level cover and the bank ivy that is not doing structural harm. The two aims are compatible and the method above achieves both.

What can go wrong

The most common mistake I see is cutting the stems and then assuming the job is done when the ivy above the cuts dies back. If you do not follow up with stump checks in the first growing season, the ivy can regrow from the cut point and re-establish itself before the following winter. The second mistake is overcorrecting: stripping all ivy from the bank as well as the climbing stems, which removes the wildlife value without any benefit to the hedge. The bank ivy and the hedge are doing different things; manage the one, leave the other.

Sources: RHS, "Ivy: on trees and as ground cover" (rhs.org.uk); Devon Hedges, "Is ivy a problem in hedges?" (devonhedges.org, March 2024); Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1; Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society, species account for Colletes hederae (bwars.com).