Hedge - World's Great Hedges

World's Great Hedges

The nineteenth century Great Hedge of India was probably the largest example of a hedge used as a barrier. It was planted and used to collect taxes by the British.

The Willow Palisade, constructed during the early Qing Dynasty (seventeenth century) to control people movement and to collect taxes on ginseng and timber in southern Manchuria, also had hedge-like features. The palisade included two dikes and a moat between them, the dikes topped by rows of willow trees, tied to one another with their branches. Gradually decaying throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the palisade disappeared in the early twentieth century, its remaining willows cut during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 by the two countries' soldiers.

The Meikleour Beech Hedges, located near Meikleour in Scotland, are noted in the Guinness World Records as the tallest and longest hedge on earth, reaching 30 metres (98 ft) in height and 530 metres (0.33 mi) in length. The beech trees were planted in 1745 by Jean Mercer on the Marquess of Lansdowne's Meikleour estate.