Shearing of hedges

Sir, – What shelter from the sun for wildlife is available now under hedges that have been sheared and stumped by misnamed environmental schemes?

How can such hedges, sheared and reduced as they are, provide shade for anything, whether birds, wildlife or cattle? How can they hold water at their base, or provide shelter, something they did for centuries when allowed grow and billow out naturally?

Is it not time to break another taboo and expose this hedge-cutting as environmental madness? – Yours, etc,

JOHN FARRELLY.

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Ballybough Road,

Dublin 3.