CHRW3Maintain or establish hedgerow trees

What it actually is

One thing before anything else, because it changes who this page is for. This action sits in the SFI 2024 expanded offer, and the SFI 2026 offer that followed it does not include it. Defra's published reasoning, as reported by Hedgelink, was high uptake and low value for money, on the argument that these trees tend to be maintained by farmers regardless of payment. So if you hold CHRW3 in an existing agreement, this page is for you for the rest of that agreement's term; if you are planning a new application, this is not an action you can add to it. Check your own agreement, and treat your agreement documents as the authority on what you hold.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 57, checked 23/08/2026, and Hedgelink, report on the published SFI 2026 offer, checked 23/08/2026, which is also the source of the Defra reasoning quoted.

The action itself: across the total length of hedgerow you enter, you keep an average of at least one hedgerow tree per 100 metres. You can get there by maintaining the trees already stood in the hedge, by selecting and growing on existing saplings, or by planting new ones, and newly established trees are tagged or clearly identified so they can be seen and spared when the hedge is cut. Dead and dying trees can be included, for their value to invertebrates and the birds that feed on them. Trees are not cut except to prolong the life of the tree, for health and safety, or where cutting reflects the tradition of the local landscape.

GOV.UK's stated aim is maintained or established hedgerow trees providing habitat for wildlife and carbon storage benefits.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 57, checked 23/08/2026.

What it pays, and what that comes to

The rate is in the panel at the top of this page. Unlike CHRW2, which pays per side, this one is paid per 100 metres of hedgerow with both sides counted together:

Source: arithmetic on the payment rate shown at the top of this page, which comes from Tilth's copy of the GOV.UK action catalogue and carries its own last-checked date. The lengths are illustrations; measure your own.

Is it worth it on your ground?

The question splits cleanly into two farms.

The farm that already has the trees. If your entered hedges already average a tree per 100 metres, the cost of this action is the counting, the care, and the discipline of not cutting the trees. The payment is small, but it is being paid against almost no spend, on hedges that were never in production. There are not many actions where the arithmetic is that short.

The farm that has to establish them. One tree per 100 metres is ten trees per kilometre. At one nursery's listed prices, hedgerow tree saplings run from £0.89 for field maple and £2.79 for English oak up to £7.99 for silver birch, so ten saplings is somewhere between about £9 and £80 a kilometre, plus a guard, a stake and the planting for each, which are your own figures. Against £300 a kilometre over the agreement, the establishment route still comes out ahead on paper, but the real cost is the care: the guidance has you planting bare-root between November and March, keeping a weed-free zone, watering in dry spells and keeping stock, machinery and the hedge cutter off them, for trees that will not look like trees within the life of the agreement.

Source: Hedge Nursery, listed hedgerow tree sapling prices, checked 23/08/2026; establishment practice from GOV.UK, How to do the SFI actions for hedgerows, checked 23/08/2026. Price your own species mix, and note the listed prices quoted are the from prices for the smallest stock.

Does it work, and what makes it work better

This section is what we have found in published sources about the practice this action pays for. It is not scheme guidance, it is not Defra's or the RPA's view, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out. We have named every source and given the date we checked it. What it means for your ground is your decision.

This is one of the thin pages, and the fit gap goes first. We have not found a Conservation Evidence assessment of maintaining or establishing hedgerow trees. Their Farmland Conservation synopsis assesses hedgerow management as a whole, which is written up on the CHRW2 page of this site, but trees within hedges are not separately assessed there. The nearest tree-specific action they list, Plant in-field trees (not farm woodland), carries their category No evidence found, on 0 studies, and in-field trees are in any case not hedgerow trees.

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 116 page, related actions listing, checked 23/08/2026.

What touches trees inside the hedgerow evidence. Two findings from the studies behind the hedgerow management assessment involve trees, and we give them for what they are rather than as evidence about this action. A replicated site comparison across the Swiss plateau found hedges managed as Ecological Compensation Areas were of higher ecological quality in the pre-alpine hills than the intensively farmed lowland, and the reported reason included more old trees and fewer invading plants; the same study found the territories of hedgerow birds concentrated in and near those managed hedges. And an English survey of over 1,500 hedges restored under agreement schemes recorded trees present in 53 to 56 per cent of them, which is a description of what restored hedges look like rather than a measurement of what the trees do.

Conservation Evidence say themselves that studies are not directly comparable or of equal value, and that study size, design, reported metrics and relevance to your own situation matter more than "simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation".

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 116, supporting evidence from individual studies (Herzog and others 2005; Catherine Bickmore Associates 2004), checked 23/08/2026.

What we have not found. Any study measuring what hedgerow trees at one per 100 metres do for wildlife. Anything on the carbon storage half of the action's stated aim, which Conservation Evidence would not cover in any case, being a wildlife database rather than a carbon one. And nothing on tagging, guards or establishment methods as they affect outcomes.

What the sources say makes it work better. Almost nothing transfers, and we are not going to stretch it. The one usable signal is the Swiss finding that old trees were part of what made the better hedges better, which sits alongside the action page's own provision that dead and dying trees count for their invertebrate and bird value. Both point the same way: the value being paid for here is stood in the old and imperfect trees at least as much as in the new saplings.

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 116, supporting evidence from individual studies, checked 23/08/2026, and GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 57, checked 23/08/2026.

What follows is Tilth's own reading of how those findings sit against this action, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

The honest position is that nobody appears to have measured this practice, and the practice is old enough and gentle enough that this says more about research priorities than about the trees. What the evidence base does support, thinly, is the shape of the action: the better-studied hedgerow work found old trees among what distinguished the best hedges, and this action's most distinctive rule, that a dead tree counts, is the kind of provision that tends to be written by people who understand where the invertebrates actually live. We would not tell you this action changes anything on your farm. We would tell you that if the trees are already there, you are being paid a modest amount to keep doing right by them, and the evidence gives no reason to hesitate.

What you actually have to do

Keep an average of at least one hedgerow tree per 100 metres over the total length of hedgerow you enter, for each year of the three year duration. Get there by maintaining existing hedgerow trees, establishing new ones from existing saplings, or planting new saplings. Tag newly established trees or identify them clearly. Dead and dying trees may be included for their habitat value. Do not cut the trees except where needed to prolong the life of the tree, for health and safety reasons, or where cutting reflects the tradition in the local landscape.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 57, checked 23/08/2026.

The establishment guidance, as advice rather than requirement: choose a species mix suited to the site and avoid ash because of dieback; source plants through suppliers certified as Plant Healthy; plant bare-root saplings between November and March, in existing gaps where possible and at least 20 metres from existing trees; keep clear of overhead power lines by 20 metres and clear of roads, tracks and rights of way; guard against browsing and grazing, stake trees over a metre tall, keep a weed-free zone and water in dry periods; and protect root zones, which run shallow and wide, from compaction, livestock and machinery. Pruning, where it happens at all, is a job for a qualified tree surgeon in the dormant season, with tree preservation orders and felling licence rules checked first.

Source: GOV.UK, How to do the SFI actions for hedgerows, checked 23/08/2026.

Where it can go, and what rules it out

An eligible hedgerow is a boundary line of shrubs, or shrubs and trees, over 20 metres long and less than 10 metres wide, including newly planted, laid and coppiced hedges and woody growth on earth or stone banks. Gaps are allowed provided no single gap is over 20 metres and gaps total less than 10 per cent of the length; the action page points larger gaps towards the separate capital grants for gapping up and planting.

The control requirement is the one that bites: you must have management control of both sides of the hedgerow. For a hedge along a road, or one shared with a neighbour, you need a legal right or obligation to maintain it and the practical ability to meet the action's requirements on it. SSSIs need consent first, and land with historic or archaeological features needs the relevant approval.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI 2024 actions print version, page 57, checked 23/08/2026.

Things worth watching

This section is Tilth's own reading of where this action is easy to get wrong. It is not scheme guidance, it is not sourced from Defra or the RPA, and none of it adds a requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

The average is an average. One tree per 100 metres over the total entered length is not one tree in every 100 metre stretch. A farm with a treeless hedge on one side and a tree-lined green lane on the other can still average out. That makes the first job arithmetic, not planting: count what you have before assuming you need to establish anything.

The flail is the biggest threat to your compliance. A tagged sapling is tagged precisely because the person cutting the hedge is not the person who planted it. If a contractor cuts your hedges, the tags, and a map of where the young trees stand, need to reach the cab, because one ordinary pass with the flail undoes three years of this action on that stretch.

Roadside hedges want checking before they are entered. Both-sides control is a legal question as much as a farming one. A hedge you have always cut is not necessarily a hedge you have the legal right or obligation to maintain, and the time to find out is before it goes into the agreement.

Do not tidy the dead ones. The action lets dead and dying trees count, which cuts against every tidy-minded instinct. Felling a dead tree for neatness both removes the habitat the action names and can drop your average below the line.

The saplings outlive the agreement. A tree established this year is a commitment measured in decades, standing in a hedge that will be cut for decades. Where it goes, relative to power lines, gateways, drains and the neighbour's boundary, matters far beyond the three years anyone is paying for it.

Keeping the evidence

Also Tilth's own reading. GOV.UK sets the requirements; what follows is a practical suggestion about record keeping.

GOV.UK's examples are field operations at land parcel level with their associated invoices, and photographs or other documentation showing the action was completed.

The natural record here is a tree count per hedge: which hedges are entered, their lengths, how many qualifying trees each carries, and where the tagged newcomers stand. That one document shows the average is met, tells the hedge cutter what to miss, and only needs updating when something changes. Photographs of tagged saplings, dated, cover establishment.

Tilth lets you drop a pin on the map where each tagged tree stands and attach a photograph to it, so the count, the positions and the proof sit together against the parcel.

The part only your own ground can answer

Whether this action costs you anything at all. That comes down to a count nobody else can do: the length of hedge you control both sides of, and the trees already stood in it. If the average is already met, the action is a payment for carrying on; if it is not, the question becomes which hedges want a tree and whether you will protect it for longer than the scheme pays. Tilth holds your boundaries, lets you measure your hedges on the map and pin every tree that counts. Request an invite.