Elderberry bushes grow wild in hedgerows

I originally envisioned the hedgerow I planted a few years ago as a necessary border between my garden and the traffic at the intersection in front of my house. I knew I wanted native shrubs and so planted a mixture of chokecherry, serviceberry, winterberry and elderberry, hoping that some would survive and flourish in the poor soil laden with road salt.

After a slow start, now, in year three, they are beginning to fill in and really get growing. The star at this point is the elderberry. These bushes added a couple feet of new growth this past year and have started to spread via suckers into the field ... yay! Ever since I learned about elderberry and started making elderberry jams, liquors and fritters, I have wanted my own patch to pick from. But now that I have them and have learned about their value to wildlife, I am thinking about the elderberry in my hedgerow, and the hedgerow itself, in a broader context.

Hedgerows are managed rows of shrubs and trees and smaller, understory plants that have been used since ancient times to protect crops, to manage livestock, to provide food, firewood, basket-making supplies, shelter for game and more. Since the 1900s, as agriculture industrialized, hedgerows have been systematically removed to make way for large farm machinery and huge fields of monocultured crops.

Now there is a resurgence of interest in hedgerows, primarily for their significant ecological benefits. Benefits such as providing habitat and travel corridors for wildlife, attracting pollinating insects, serving as windbreaks, increasing biodiversity in the area by supporting a wide array of wildlife, and even storing carbon if long-lived woody species of plants are used. In my case, a hedgerow will dampen noise pollution from cars and absorb some of the emissions (as well as the burnt rubber smoke that some feel necessary to produce as they peel away from the stop sign).

Large open spaces are not natural to this area. Birds and most animals looking for some habitat to raise young in aren't attracted to a lawn, they want trees and shrubs, connected together to form safe passage through the landscape. Shrubs planted in hedgerows do this, sometimes better than just trees alone. What's more they are more resilient to change than large trees. They grow back more quickly and can often survive fire or intense pruning.

Elderberries should be part of any intentionally planted hedgerow. Left to their own devices they will frequently make their own hedgerows. I frequently see broad swaths of elderberry growing in roadside ditches. They like that mix of damp soil and lots of sun. Elderberry are fairly easy to identify. The flower clusters are arranged as an umbel - like an umbrella, all the flower stalks radiate from the same point. Right now, the white flowers of the elderberry umbel are blooming. Drive around and look. You’ll see what I mean about their innate ability to form a hedgerow.

Aside from their ability to thrive in roadside conditions, there are numerous other reasons to include elderberries in your hedgerow. Both the flowers and the berries are edible, though you have to cook the berries first. Unripe elderberries are poisonous to humans. Also beware their poisonous look-alike, the water hemlock.

Not so for wildlife. A variety of birds - bluebirds, indigo buntings, finches, sparrows, cedar waxwings and warblers - all love elderberries, as do squirrels and other rodents, bears, deer and moose. They’re also a favorite food of the beautiful cecropia moth caterpillar, which will metamorphose into the largest moth found in North America.

As my hedgerow has begun to mature, my feelings about it have matured as well. I don't see it just as a barrier to the road, I now envision an ecosystem that will not only serve as a barrier, but as food and home to the wildlife in my backyard. While I still might harvest some elderberry for personal use (you can literally use almost all parts of this shrub, not just for food, but for dye, for insect repellent and more), instead, for the most part, I will leave it to the wildlife that needs it more than I do.