Heavenly hedges

Evergreen or deciduous, large or small, hedges are the perfect way to bring structure to your garden - and now is the best time of year to plant one

- Monty

I love all hedges. At their best they create magnificent living sculpture in gardens, while at their worst even the scruffiest hedge provides ideal nesting and cover for birds, insects and small mammals. Hedges baffle the wind far better than any fence or wall, filtering and sluicing it through their mesh of branches, and create microclimates that can transform the range of plants a garden can contain. Their shade is usually benign and protective and, not least, they provide the privacy that every garden must have if it's to be fully enjoyed.

But the thing I like most about hedges is the spaces they create. It is a truism worth repeating that the best bits of any garden are the spaces between plants. While these can be explored with infinite variety and subtlety in a border filled with glorious flowers, nothing in a garden so deliberately cossets space as a fine hedge.

Walls come close, but very few walls have the volume of a hedge or the adaptability to swoop, curve or billow with elegance - let alone explode with a flurry of sparrows as you pass. A hedge, for all its fresh-cut crispness, retains the anarchy of growth and change that is the pulse beneath the surface of even the most rigidly tamed garden.

Our garden in London in the 1980s didn't have a single hedge - we were hedgeless in Hackney. But we did have walls all round (the one on the south-facing side being astonishingly high and lovely) and we built another right across the garden to divide it. The spaces were made, but entirely in brick and stone. Was that a city thing? Or, to flip the question, are hedges more suited to rural gardens? No, and no. Although I liked that garden very much-loved it even - it was a missed opportunity. If I were doing it again, I'd have built those blocks of air with the softness of hedges.

Long divisions