What is it?
A hugel mound, or hügelkultur mound, looks like a raised garden bed but with a twist. It’s essentially a mound made up of layers of decaying logs, branches, leaves, and finally a planted soil layer. They can vary in size, but they often have a distinctive mound shape and are covered with plants whose roots reach down into the rotting wood below.
What does it do?
The decaying wood and organic matter that hugel mounds are built from create a rich habitat for plants and animals. Just like log piles, the heat they generate, the moisture they hold and the nooks and crannies they contain in amongst the wood and brash make great hideaways, nesting sites and, depending on the weather outside, places to heat up, cool down and stay hydrated. Like log piles they are also fantastic sources of food, providing a rich supply of nutritious fungi, detritus and invertebrates. In addition, they come with a bonus surface layer of plant life that provides even more food and habitat. Hugel mounds help prevent flooding by holding and slowing water like sponges. As well as great wildlife habitat, they are an ingenious way of creating a fertile planting bed over what might have been barren ground.
Who benefits?
Hugel mounds provide habitats for insects and other invertebrates, fungi, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals. If built with large enough cavities inside hedgehogs may breed in there. Hugel mounds are great pond-side habitats: certainly frogs and other amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates will hydrate and keep warm or cool in there during their months out of the water. These and small mammals like shrews will shelter from predators there and feed on the rich supply of slugs and bugs that specialise in eating dead plant matter, as will countless other animals including birds like song thrushes. Butterflies and moths may hide out in hugel mounds, in some cases over-wintering in them. Insects that feed, hydrate, breed and shelter in them may become food for birds, bats and dragonflies once they take to the wing.
Find out more
- For more information, visit the Wildlife Gardening Forum guide to Hugelkultur
