← All guides · Wildlife planting · Updated August 2026

How to plant a bare-root wildlife hedge in Broadstairs: native species, Margate chalk and the November window.

A native mixed hedge is the most wildlife-productive thing a CT10 garden can grow. Hawthorn, blackthorn and dog rose planted on Margate chalk in November will, by year three, support over 300 invertebrate species, produce berries and hips for winter migrants, and provide nesting sites for six or seven common Thanet bird species. The planting itself, done correctly, takes an afternoon. Here is how I approach it.

Steps

Step 1: Choose your species mix for Thanet chalk soil

A wildlife hedge works best as a mix of three to five native species, not a monoculture. On the Margate chalk that underlies most of Broadstairs, St Peter's and Reading Street, the following four species are the reliable core:

• Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna): the anchor species. Tolerates thin chalk, tolerates salt wind, flowers in May for bees, berries from August through January for thrushes and blackbirds. Aim for roughly half your total plant count.
• Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa): dense, thorny, fast to establish on chalk, flowers in March before the leaves as one of the first nectar sources of the year. Provides sloe berries for autumn migrants. Useful as one quarter of the mix.
• Dog rose (Rosa canina): scrambles through the mix, produces hips that persist through winter and are taken by fieldfares and redwings on their arrival from the north. One plant in five is plenty.
• Spindle (Euonymus europaeus): the species most associated with chalk downland. Its pink-and-orange seeds are taken by robins and blackcaps. One plant in six or seven rounds out the mix without overrunning it.

Optional additions where space allows: field maple (Acer campestre) for autumn colour and aphid habitat (which feeds blue tits), and elder (Sambucus nigra) for a fast early gap-filler, though elder grows vigorously and needs managing from year two to stop it shading out neighbours.

Step 2: Order bare-root whips for November delivery

Bare-root whips are the correct form for a new wildlife hedge planting. They are lifted dormant from the nursery, have a full open root system (not a constrained pot rootball), establish far more quickly than pot-grown stock, and cost a fraction of the price. A 60-90cm bare-root whip of hawthorn typically costs 50-70p in quantity; the equivalent 2-litre pot-grown plant is three to four times the price and slower to settle in.

Order in September or October for November dispatch. The main UK bare-root season runs from November to March; early November stock is often the strongest. Order 3 plants per running metre for a single-row planting at 33cm spacing, or 5 plants per running metre if you are planting in two staggered rows 45cm apart (the two-row approach produces a denser base faster and is worth the extra cost for a new garden hedge). Specify bare-root, not cell-grown or pot-grown. Most specialist hedging nurseries dispatch to CT10 without difficulty.

Step 3: Prepare the site: clear competing growth and break the chalk

Mark out the hedge line with string pegs a week before planting. Clear any grass or weeds from a 60cm-wide strip along the line, either by hand-digging or by laying cardboard and a deep bark mulch six to eight weeks in advance to kill the grass underneath. Do not use residual herbicides on a wildlife planting: the target species will be using the same soil.

Probe the site with a metal spike or long screwdriver to understand how deep the topsoil goes before you hit solid chalk. In Broadstairs and North Foreland gardens on the plateau, topsoil depth can be as little as 20-30cm over chalk rubble. Anywhere under 30cm of friable soil will stress new plantings in their first dry summer. If depth is marginal, break up the chalk below to 45cm using a mattock or crowbar before planting. This takes time but is the single most effective thing you can do for survival on the Thanet chalk.

Step 4: Dig the planting position and improve the soil

For each whip, dig a hole or a continuous trench 30cm wide and 30cm deep (slightly deeper than the root system of the whips you have ordered). Mix the removed soil with garden compost or well-rotted farmyard manure at roughly one-third compost to two-thirds soil by volume. On chalk, organic matter added at planting is the main lever for moisture retention and early establishment: the Manston station records 612.6mm of annual rainfall, but it falls unevenly and the chalk-derived soils drain very fast in dry spells. The compost holds moisture in the root zone through the first summer when it matters most.

On a chalky site, also add mycorrhizal fungi granules to each planting position. Mix the granules with a small amount of water to form a paste and coat the roots just before lowering them into the hole. This step is not expensive (a bag covers 50-60 plants) and evidence from RHS trials suggests a meaningful improvement in establishment rates on nutrient-poor chalk soils.

Step 5: Plant the whips at correct depth and spacing

Lower each whip into its position so that the soil mark on the stem (the darker band where it sat at the nursery) is at the same level as the surrounding soil surface. Do not plant deeper than this mark. Spread the roots naturally in the hole rather than coiling or doubling them back on themselves. Backfill with the improved soil mix, firming it in layers with your boot to exclude air pockets around the roots. Do not plant into waterlogged or frozen ground: if you receive your whips and the ground is frozen, heel them in temporarily in a sheltered spot and plant as soon as conditions allow.

For spacing: in a single row, plant at 33cm centres. In two staggered rows, plant at 33cm centres within each row, with the rows 45cm apart and each plant in row 2 sitting midway between adjacent plants in row 1. The staggered two-row arrangement produces a significantly denser hedge at eye level by year two compared with a single row at the same plant count per linear metre.

Step 6: Stake, guard and mulch the new planting

Bare-root whips at 60-90cm height do not need staking unless the site is very exposed. On clifftop boundaries above Stone Bay, Joss Bay, Kingsgate and North Foreland, drive a short cane beside each plant and tie it loosely with a figure-of-eight loop: the cane protects the stem from being rocked by northeast gales during the critical first winter before roots have anchored. On more sheltered inland sites in St Peter's or Reading Street, caning is optional.

Rabbit damage is worth considering. Broadstairs and the Reading Street fringe have a resident rabbit population, and a newly planted whig without protection at the base will be stripped of bark at rabbit height overnight. Fit a spiral rabbit guard to each stem, or net the whole planting with a low mesh fence at 90cm height around the perimeter. Remove guards in year two once stems have hardened.

Mulch the base of the entire planting with a 8-10cm layer of bark chips, leaving a 10cm gap clear of each stem. The mulch suppresses competing grass, holds moisture in the root zone through summer, and gradually adds organic matter to the chalk soil as it breaks down. On a 10m hedge run, one bulk bag of bark mulch covers the planting strip generously.

Step 7: Make the first-year cut in January or February after planting

This step is counter-intuitive but essential. In the January or February following your November planting, cut each whip back to 45-60cm above ground level, even if they have put on some growth and look healthy. This hard formative cut forces the plant to produce multiple side shoots from low on the stem rather than continuing to extend upward as a single leader. The result by the end of year two is a hedge with a dense branching base from 20cm above ground, rather than a row of thin single stems with foliage only at the top.

Skipping this cut is the most common reason a new wildlife hedge looks sparse and gappy at knee height five years in. The plants will be taller without the cut, but the hedge will be thinner, weaker to wind, and provide less nesting habitat in the lower section where blackbirds, wrens and robins prefer to nest.

Species notes: what works on Margate chalk and what to be cautious of

Hawthorn is genuinely chalk-tolerant: it grows on every soil type from heavy clay to the thinnest chalk rubble on the North Foreland plateau, and tolerates the northeast salt wind well enough that you will find it in existing field hedges along Reading Street and at the SSSI edge near Joss Bay. It is the low-risk anchor choice. If nothing else in the mix survives the first summer, the hawthorn will.

Blackthorn establishes well on chalk but throws up root suckers aggressively from year three onward if the roots are disturbed (by digging near the base, for example). On a narrow garden boundary this is worth knowing: suckers can spread 30-40cm from the planted stem. Cut suckers off flush at soil level with a sharp spade in October; do not dig them out, as root disturbance stimulates more.

Field maple is an excellent addition on sites with 45cm or more of soil depth before chalk, but struggles where topsoil is very thin. If your probe hits solid chalk at 20-25cm, hold field maple back to a second phase of planting once the original hedge root system has worked the chalk below.

Elder germinates readily from bird-dropped seed and tends to appear in any new wildlife hedge by year two without you planting it. If you choose to include it deliberately, plant just one or two in ten metres and be ready to cut the elder harder than the rest of the hedge at the Step 7 cut and in subsequent years: it grows two to three times faster than hawthorn and will shade out neighbouring species if left unchecked.

Species to avoid in a Thanet wildlife hedge planting: Leylandii and other fast conifers support almost no insect life, produce no berries, and create a deep dense shade that prevents the mixed understorey that wildlife hedges depend on. Cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) is similarly low in wildlife value despite being a common sight on CT10 boundaries. Both are fine as windbreak or boundary plants in their own right, but they are not wildlife hedges.

The Thanet Coast SSSI adjacency angle

Broadstairs and the clifftop bays at Stone Bay, Joss Bay, Kingsgate and North Foreland sit alongside the Thanet Coast SSSI, SPA and Ramsar designation, one of the most significant intertidal and cliff-top wildlife sites in Kent. A native mixed hedge planted in a CT10 garden, even an inland one in St Peter's or on the Reading Street fringe, sits within the feeding and movement range of species that use the SSSI edge: peregrine, kestrel, linnet, yellowhammer on the arable fringe, and the migrant songbird passage that moves through Thanet in October and March. Hawthorn and blackthorn berries on a garden hedge contribute directly to that migrant corridor: a 10m run of established mixed native hedge in berry can attract 20-30 fieldfares in an October morning before they move on.

For gardens on or immediately adjacent to the clifftop, the SSSI designation does not restrict native hedge planting. Natural England's general position is that native hedge planting on the coastal fringe is beneficial for the features the SSSI is designated to protect. Where an existing hedge within the SSSI boundary is being replaced rather than a new hedge planted, it is worth confirming with Natural England's Kent team before removing the existing hedge, in case it is already providing designated habitat value.

Sources: Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1; Royal Horticultural Society, "How to plant bare root hedges" (YouTube, Grow at Home series, youtube.com/watch?v=qDJc9rqCAY4); RHS, "Plant a bare root mixed wildlife hedge" (rhs.org.uk/garden-inspiration/wildlife/plant-a-bare-root-mixed-wildlife-hedge); The Wildlife Trusts, "How to make a hedge for wildlife" (wildlifetrusts.org); Met Office climate averages 1991-2020, Manston station (612.6mm annual rainfall); Natural England, Thanet Coast SSSI/SPA/Ramsar notification and features. Note: direct YouTube egress was blocked from the generation environment; source verification is via web-search cross-reference and channel-authority heuristic per INGESTION.md.