Summer Photos

Welcome to our fourth blog.

Summer is nearly spent but the wood is looking great and still growing – compare the current picture of the silver birches with four months ago – some of them have grown by over a metre!  And they all look healthy so the drought earlier in the spring did not affect them.

I am posting a few other photos of the area – a couple of them show a really old gnarled willow tree on the northern edge of the area – it has a circumference of about 100 metres! – that isn’t the circumference of the trunk, but the tree itself – each limb, sometimes running almost horizontally, is approx. 20 metres!

We are hoping to turn this area into something like what the Victorians called a stumpery – a collection of stumps which were bedecked with mainly ferns and other woodland plants like bluebells etc. I think ours would be a fernery as we cannot import stumps but the willow limbs will provide the structure.

Another photo shows an area where there are a couple of enormous Alders (we have been informed they are over 100 years old, apparently very old for Alders!).  This is where the old stream tributary used to run – in the winter it filled with water so we thought it would be good to create a pond in this place with perhaps one of the trees as an island for would be fugitive ducks safe from the fox.  It would also lend itself to all kinds of other wildlife – I say lend itself but the loan would of course be permanent.

Other photos show a couple of the paths that run round the wood.  There is probably almost a mile of paths, some weaving under the trees and some running over when the limbs of the willows are touching the ground!   Some of these paths run through the already established woodland and some border the open space where we hope to be planting more trees.

This coming week we are expecting a site visit from the Poplar Tree Company (http://www.poplartree.co.uk/smallwoods.html) which plant woodland with the aid of a government grant – the site has to be two acres or more and we are a bit under with Georges Wood but hopefully they may agree. They advise, plant and help maintain for five years.  Planting would of course take place in winter when all the nettles and other vegetation have died down making it more accessible.

We shall let you know the outcome of the visit in our next blog – keep your fingers crossed....!