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Rabbit guards for new hedge whips: individual spirals or perimeter netting?

October marks the start of the bare-root planting season, and the first practical decision a landowner or gardener faces before buying a single hedge whip is not which species to plant. It is how to protect those plants from rabbits through their first winter and spring, when young stems are at their most vulnerable and rabbit browsing pressure is at its peak. The choice between fitting individual spiral guards to each plant and running a length of perimeter netting around the whole hedge line is a genuine trade-off, not a formality. Getting it wrong can cost most of a planting in a single February night.

Why rabbit damage to new whips is so severe

A bare-root whip planted in November is, in most species, a stem of 40 to 90 centimetres with a modest root system that has just been lifted from the nursery field and replanted in different soil. It has no established root store to draw on if the above-ground portion is removed. A rabbit browsing through a newly planted hedge line does not simply set growth back by a season: it can kill the plant outright if the stem is stripped below the level of viable regrowth buds, or chewed to a point where the stem cannot sustain the spring flush. Hawthorn and blackthorn have good regenerative capacity and will often throw shoots from low on the stem even after hard browsing, but field maple, hazel, dog rose and hornbeam are considerably more vulnerable. A hawthorn whip browsed hard in February may still produce growth. A hornbeam whip browsed to the same degree is more likely to fail entirely.

Rabbit pressure on a new hedge planting in east Kent is not a theoretical risk. The chalk farmland around Goodnestone, Chillenden and Knowlton supports dense rabbit populations, and the warm south-facing banks that make good hedge sites often double as rabbit warren banks. On open arable field boundaries between Chillenden and Knowlton, you will regularly see dozens of rabbits at dusk in the same field margins where new hedge planting would be most useful. Assuming modest rabbit pressure on a new planting in this area and deciding to take the chance without protection is a predictably expensive decision.

The decision: individual spiral guards or perimeter netting?

Pros of individual spiral guards

• Cost per plant is low. Standard 60 cm plastic spiral guards cost around 15p to 30p each from UK hedging suppliers. A bamboo cane adds a similar amount. For a 20-metre run of native mix hedge planted at three plants per metre, the guard and cane cost for 60 plants is a small outlay. The difference in materials cost compared to perimeter netting is significant, particularly on longer runs.
• Grant-eligible. Under the Countryside Stewardship scheme and Natural England's Hedgerow, Tree and Scrub Creation options, individual canes and guards are listed as eligible capital items. Perimeter rabbit netting is not typically funded under these options. If your new hedge planting is part of a grant agreement, confirming that guards are the funded protection method before choosing netting matters: the wrong choice may mean the protection cost comes entirely out of your own pocket.
• Allow a bushier, lower hedge base. Solid-wall shelters and open-spiral guards both encourage upward growth, but spiral and mesh guards in particular allow lower lateral branching to develop around and through the spiral as the plant grows. A hedge planted with the intention of being laid in fifteen or twenty years needs a multi-stemmed base with good low branching. Individual guards support that growth habit better than perimeter netting, which does not constrain growth but also provides no positive scaffolding effect.
• Flexible and removable per plant. As plants establish over two to four years, individual guards can be removed from successful plants without disturbing the rest of the planting. A plant that fails and needs replacing can have its guard reused. Perimeter netting, once it has become partially enmeshed in growing hedge stems, is considerably harder to remove without damage.
• Low installation time per plant. Push the bamboo cane in beside the plant, wrap the spiral around both cane and stem, done. A fit person can guard a 30-metre hedge run in an hour or so. For short runs and garden-scale plantings, this speed advantage over netting installation is real.

Cons of individual spiral guards

• Plastic fragment problem. Standard UV-degraded spirals, typically rated for three to five years, break down into fragments in situ if not collected before they fail. The spiral design means fragments embed in the developing hedge stems and are almost impossible to remove cleanly once the hedge has grown around them. Biodegradable alternatives exist but are more expensive and, in practice, do not fully break down in soil at the rate suppliers sometimes suggest. If you use plastic spirals, build in an explicit plan to collect them after three to four years. Leaving them in place is the industry's most persistent practical failing on new hedge plantings.
• Vulnerable to wind on exposed sites. The open farmland around Goodnestone and Chillenden is exposed to east and north-easterly winds from the Kent coast in winter. Spiral guards fitted on bamboo canes are knocked off easily in a gale, and the plant they were protecting is left open without you knowing. If the guard blows off in November and is not replaced until you next visit the planting in March, the plant may have been browsed throughout the period of highest rabbit pressure. On any open field boundary planting, check guards after every significant wind event through the first winter.
• Hares can browse above the guard top. Brown hares are present throughout the open farmland around Goodnestone, Chillenden and Knowlton. A hare standing on its hind legs can browse a plant just above the top of a standard 60 cm spiral guard. On sites with known hare pressure, a 60 cm guard does not give complete protection. Taller solid-wall shelters (75 cm to 90 cm) reduce but do not eliminate this risk.
• No protection from voles or mice. Field voles and bank voles can access the interior of open-spiral guards and strip the bark of young stems in winter when grass is scarce. The Rural Payments Agency's guidance on guard selection notes that mesh and spiral guards offer less effective protection from voles and mice than solid-wall shelters do. On a planting in or adjacent to rough grass, vole damage to guarded plants is a genuine risk that spirals do not address.
• Fitting labour is significant for large plantings. Sixty individual guards is manageable in an afternoon. Three hundred guards for a 100-metre field boundary planted at three plants per metre is a full day's work, and every cane must be pushed in at the correct depth and alignment to stop the guard twisting off in wind. For long farm-scale hedge plantings, the fitting time argument for individual guards weakens considerably.

Pros of perimeter rabbit netting

• Protects every plant in the run, regardless of which are targeted. A correctly installed perimeter fence of 90 cm hex wire with a buried toe of 15 to 20 cm bent outward prevents rabbits burrowing under as well as jumping or pushing through. There are no individual guard failures to track, no canes to re-push after wind events, and no gaps where a missed plant gets browsed. The protection is consistent along the whole hedge line.
• Effective against hares as well as rabbits. A 90 cm fence of appropriate wire, properly tensioned on sturdy posts, excludes hares as well as rabbits, which a standard 60 cm spiral guard does not. If the planting site has confirmed hare presence, perimeter netting is the more reliable option.
• Faster per linear metre for long runs. On a 100-metre field boundary, running two lines of posts at 3 to 4 metre spacing and stretching a single run of hex wire is faster than fitting 300 individual spiral guards and canes, particularly if the boundary is relatively straight. The break-even point in labour time between the two approaches depends on the run length, post spacing and number of plants, but for farm-scale plantings of 60 metres or more, netting often saves time overall.
• No per-plant residue problem. Once the hedge is established and the netting removed, there are no degrading plastic fragments left in the stems. The wire can be stored and reused for the next planting.
• Can be integrated with stock-proofing. On a farm boundary that also needs to exclude livestock, combining rabbit netting with a stock fence on the same posts is a practical efficiency. The rabbit hex wire is stapled to the lower section of the same fence that would be required anyway for stock management, which spreads the post and fencing cost across two functions.

Cons of perimeter rabbit netting

• Higher upfront materials cost. Posts, hex wire, staples, pegs for the buried toe and fencing strainers for the corners add up to a substantially higher outlay than guards and canes for the same length of hedge run. On a 30-metre garden boundary, the cost difference can be two to three times the guard cost, without accounting for the installation time.
• Not grant-eligible for hedgerow creation under most current schemes. If the planting is funded under Countryside Stewardship or a similar scheme, checking the eligible capital items before choosing netting is essential. The usual position is that individual guards and canes are the funded protection method. Choosing netting instead may leave the protection cost entirely unsubsidised.
• Restricts small mammal movement. Hedgehogs, weasels, stoats and harvest mice all use hedgerow bases as corridors. A continuous perimeter fence without deliberate ground-level gaps reduces that connectivity. On a farm boundary this is a genuine wildlife management trade-off: the hedge you are protecting is itself valuable to small mammals, but the fence protecting it during establishment cuts off the corridor you are trying to create. Building in deliberate small-mammal gaps at 10-metre intervals, covered in mesh fine enough to exclude rabbits, partially addresses this but adds cost and complexity.
• Becomes enmeshed in growing hedge stems if not removed promptly. Hex wire stapled to posts near a growing hedge will be growing through the stems within five to eight years if not removed. Removing enmeshed wire from an established hedge requires cutting back growth you have spent years developing. The fence must be taken down once the hedge is established, typically at year four to five, or before the hedge reaches the fence line, whichever comes first. On a farm where the fence has also been doing stock-proofing duty, removing it may open the boundary before the hedge is thick enough to replace it.
• Does not protect against voles. Like spirals, perimeter netting stops rabbits and hares but does not address field vole and bank vole stripping of young bark. If vole pressure is the primary risk, neither method is adequate on its own: a thorough weed-control mulch strip that reduces grass cover at the hedge base, removing the vole habitat, is the more effective intervention than a change of guard type.
• Visually conspicuous in a garden or estate setting. A line of posts and hex wire along a garden boundary or within the setting of Goodnestone Park has a different visual character to a line of small bamboo canes. In a formal or historic-garden context, the appearance of the protection matters during the establishment years.

How to decide: the three questions that matter

First: how long is the hedge run and how many plants? For a garden boundary of 10 to 30 metres, individual spiral guards are almost always the right choice: the labour saving from netting is minimal at that scale, the cost difference is significant, and the visual result is less intrusive. For a farm field boundary of 60 metres or more with high rabbit pressure, netting merits a proper cost comparison. At 100 metres with 300 plants at known high pressure, the case for netting on a field planting is genuinely competitive.

Second: is the planting covered by a grant scheme? If yes, check the eligible capital items before you choose netting. Most current schemes fund guards and canes as the standard protection method. Using netting instead may be practical but cost you the subsidy on protection. This question alone tips the decision back toward guards for most grant-funded hedgerow creation in Kent.

Third: what is the specific browsing pressure on this site? If the site has a visible rabbit warren bank within 50 metres, or if hares are regularly present, the pressure is likely high enough to justify thinking seriously about taller solid-wall shelters rather than open spirals, or about netting if the run is long enough to make it practical. If rabbit pressure is moderate, on an open garden boundary with some rabbits but no visible warrens nearby, standard 60 cm spirals fitted firmly on sturdy canes and checked after each winter gale are adequate.

Practical aftercare that matters regardless of which method you choose

A weed-control mulch strip of 60 to 80 mm depth and at least 60 cm wide along the whole hedge planting line reduces the competition from grass and dock that costs more new plantings than rabbit browsing does. It also reduces the rough grass cover at the hedge base that supports the vole populations that neither spirals nor perimeter netting protect against. On the free-draining chalky boulder clay around Goodnestone and Chillenden, where the soil can dry out quickly through the spring, a mulch strip also reduces moisture loss during the critical first growing season. Whatever protection you choose for the stems above ground, neglecting the base competition is the single most common reason bare-root hedges underperform in east Kent.

Check your protection in late January and early February. This is when rabbit pressure on young woody growth is at its highest, as other food sources decline, and when spiral guards are most likely to have blown off canes in the preceding months. A brief walk along a new planting in early February to check guard integrity and re-fit anything that has shifted takes half an hour and can save an entire hedge run.

Sources: Rural Payments Agency, guidance for vole, rabbit or hare guards under the Agri-Environment Climate Scheme (ruralpayments.org); Woodland Trust, native hedge planting and establishment guidance (woodlandtrust.org.uk); RHS, hedge planting guidance (rhs.org.uk); Habitat Aid, biodegradable plant guards product notes (habitataid.co.uk); Ashridge Trees, spiral guard specifications (ashridgetrees.co.uk); Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1.