Reclaiming nature’s many delights through living fences [Book Review]

My neighbour in Gurugram has a hedge of roses and jasmines outside the brick wall of her house. Just before the rains it is fragrant with white jasmines and in the winter season there are clusters of small pink and white roses on the hedge. My house, also in Gurugram, has a hedgerow of hibiscus trees outside a brick and grill fencing. The trees are uneven and in the flowering season, which is almost round the year, there are red, orange and pink hibiscus flowers. Both the hedge and the hedgerow attract squirrels, butterflies and birds. I have seen bulbuls nesting in the thickest parts of the hedgerow.

In the hot summer months, many people put earthen pots of water for birds and squirrels adjacent to the fencing or in courtyards. There were also chameleons, before Gurugram became highly urbanised. During the rainy season, I have also seen many snakes in the undergrowth. A few months ago, I spotted one in the tree fencing that separates my house and my sister’s. The adjoining tall and stately kanak champa (Pterospermum acerifolium) also in the fenced area, is home to many birds and bees, the latter occasionally building their honeycombs in them or the adjoining tall trees.

These fences, teeming with life, still exist at a time when floods, climate change and the rampant growth of brick and concrete buildings and industrial hubs are decimating our rural and urban landscapes and eating into the spaces of birds, bees and a myriad other creatures of nature.

Landscape architect Sonali Dahotre seeks to reintroduce these much-needed Edens with her book The Living Fence.

A guide to reclaim green walls at home

The volume differs from many books on nature and environment, as it is a plantation guide for those interested in creating their own living fences. A living fence, Dahotre explains, is a row of plants grown along the boundary of a property to serve as a natural barrier. It is called a hedge when a single species is planted and carefully groomed for uniformity. Hedgerows, however, consist of multiple species allowed to grow to their natural form without regular grooming.

A living fence offers numerous benefits: security, beautification, fuelwood and even serves as a windbreaker. It deters intrusions and provides habitat for numerous wildlife. Living fences are not new, says Dahotre. Planted hedges have been integral to the landscape in India and around the world. In fact living fences were common in urban India till the early 1990s. Traditionally, they marked property lines between neighbours. Compound walls were constructed when there was a difference in the economic class in two neighbourhoods or when the adjoining land was uninhabited. With land prices rising and spaces shrinking, the green boundaries were replaced with stone, brick walls and even metal fences.

Beautifully illustrated and explained, The Living Fence should appeal not just to landscape architects and foresters but to all those who yearn for peace and beauty of green spaces. Such fences are also a desirable way of countering the heat, dust and myriad sounds of urbanisation. Nor should we forget, as the author points out, that we share this earth with 8.7 million other organisms, whose existence predates us. While larger animals have retreated, smaller ones struggle to survive on the fringes. Living fences, however, could provide refuge for squirrels, birds, garden lizards, spiders, butterflies, moths, bees, a host of other native and migratory insects and birds. A living fence could also interrupt the flow of rain water, allowing it to linger and percolate to the ground like a contour trench. When multiplied across the city, these barriers can reduce the speed and volume of the run-off and arrest flooding, says Dahotre. As one sees on television channels and newspapers these days, “urban roads are turning into open drains.” While raised planter beds may look pretty, they do not give the benefits of plants grown directly into the soil.

In rural areas, live fences provide food, fuel, medicine, fodder and additional income while marking property boundaries and protecting against grazing livestock and in certain regions, even from larger wild animals. Thorny plants like Opuntia and Euphorbia act as both live barriers and green manure while deterring grazing animals. In the flatter Gangetic plains of Bihar, where floods occur frequently, villagers plant bamboo parallel to the river. When the water recedes, the bamboo slows the flow and protects houses from flooding.

Live fences of the past

The section on ‘Live Fences in History and in Present Day’ makes interesting reading. The earliest references to hedges appear in the works of classical authors. Democritus (460-470 BCE) wrote that an effective and inexpensive hedge could be grown by sowing seeds of brambles, white thorn, goose berry and barberry. Julius Caesar in his report on the Battle of Gaul (57 BCE) described the formidable living barriers constructed by the Nervii tribe along the present day Belgium-France border. Bent trees with briars and thorns had turned the hedge into a fortification that was impossible to enter or even see through. Hedgerows were and continue to be an integral feature of the English countryside. After the Second World War, hedgerows began disappearing in the UK and Europe as governments sought arable land to cope with food shortages. British ecologist Robert Wolton, monitoring a hedgerow near his house over two years, recorded 2070 species — insects to mammals, reptiles, birds, fungi and mosses — inhabiting or visiting it. Hedgerows also contribute to carbon sequestration by taking CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it as carbon in their biomass and leaves. Today, hedgerow protection is enshrined by law in England and Wales.

Though there is no direct reference to live fencing or hedgerows in Indian texts, Kautilya’s Arthashastra mentions village boundaries that could be a river, a mountain, forests, bulbous plants, caves or trees such as salmali (silk cotton tree), sami and kshiravriksha (milky trees). In later centuries there are historical, military and travel narratives of hedges being used as protection for towns. The Maharaja of Mysore, Devaraja Wodeyar 11 (1728-1766), established a formidable defensive hedge around Bengaluru Pettah to protect the settlement from invaders. It was a barrier of thorny vegetation, 73 metres wide, encircled by a deep ditch.

Robert Orme in his ‘History of the Military Transitions of the British Nation in Indosthan’ wrote about the boundary hedge surrounding Pondicherry. “The greatest part of the ground lying around the town was enclosed by a hedge of large aloes and other thorny plants, intermixed with great numbers of coconut and palm trees, which together formed a defence impenetrable to the cavalry, and a very difficult passage to the infantry”. In addition to being a defence against sudden incursions, it marked the limits of the territory conceded by the princely ruler to the French, when they established themselves at Pondicherry.

A trove of beauty and information

Dahotre does not just sing paeans of the many virtues of living fences but woos you to plant hedges so that you can give back to nature what many of us have taken for granted and over exploited. Close to 290 pages of the 365 pages book are visual treats — exquisite photographs that give details of what to plant for living fences. She tells you the ecological services provided by the plants and the insects, birds, butterflies and even bats attracted to them. The economic benefits too are listed as well the kind of soil, water requirements of the plants and the height they would acquire.

Above each photograph its scientific/botanical name as well as its local names. For example, Rosa brunonii, also known as the Himalayan musk rose, chal, phulwari, tarni and gulab. With eye-catching, fragrant flowers, it is ideal for homefronts. It can also be trained to make arches or gateways or pruned to make hedges. It is suitable for residences, farm houses, community spaces and religious complexes. This semi-evergreen grows up to 7m, flowers in May-June and fruits throughout the year. The flowers are fragrant white, filled with a mass of yellow stamens; the fruits are ovoid shaped and orange, red or brown in colour and have commercial value.

Bauhinia racemosa, or the bidi leaf tree, is also known as kutabuli, tataki, banraji, yugmapatra with its blue-green, camel-foot shaped foliage and dark bark. It grows in rocky soils, on slopes, in arid regions as well as areas of high rainfall and can form a compact, bushy physical barrier. It has very small greenish white flowers and its fruits are long woody pods. It is a host plant for black ants and the common emigrant butterfly. On Dussehra in Goa and Maharashtra, its leaves are exchanged, as it is symbolic of exchanging gold. The tree is often referred to as sonpatta and its leaves are used for making bidis, much before the introduction of tobacco.

As her opposition to lifeless, concrete compound walls, the author has presented this well-illustrated plantation guide for those wanting beautiful boundaries around their properties, residences and farm houses. She also advises caution with species like Lantana camara and Tecoma sp. Though excellent as live fences, resistant to grazing, attractive to birds and butterflies and requiring little maintenance, their invasive tendency makes them ecologically destructive. Truly a wonderful book, and my only grouse is the print is too small, making it difficult to read!

Banner image: A garden lizard on a shrub of the genus Carissa. Image by Sonali Dahotre.

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