Richard Negus

A Suffolk-based professional hedgelayer, conservationist and writer, Richard is a features writer and country diarist for Shooting Times. A former soldier and professional horseman, he now lays hedges for a living, and is recognised as one of the country’s leading practitioners of hedgerow management and rejuvenation. Richard started writing when he spotted a competition in Shooting Times; his account of joining the Great Yarmouth wildfowlers caught the eye of the then editor, Patrick Galbraith, and other commissions followed. His first book, Words from the Hedge: A Hedgelayer’s View of the Countryside, was published in 2025 and led John Lewis-Stempel to call him the hedgerow’s one true champion. He appears monthly on BBC Radio Suffolk with his Letter From the Country and co-hosts the CountrySlide podcast on British rural life and work.