A systems approach to the research of people’s relationships with English hedgerows

Although complexity is often recognised as a feature of landscapes, assessment of their value and prescriptions for their management are usually based on a narrow, reductionist framework, involving either wildlife or people, but rarely both. This paper demonstrates how systems ideas have been applied to provide a broader approach to researching hedgerows in the UK, drawing on the idea that holistic thinking unites multiple views of stakeholders so as to identify future options. People value hedgerows in the UK for ecological, functional, historical, visual and personal reasons, although opinion is dependent on each individual’s personal relationship with hedgerows. The cultural dimensions of hedgerows and the implications for future hedged landscapes were investigated through the collection and exploration of different stakeholder perspectives. The findings of this research suggest that consideration of both the objective and the subjective hedgerow values of stakeholders offers opportunities to examine the different boundaries to their systems of interest and so help to include and accommodate complex human factors.