Yes, definitely mother to a few hundred trees… (see An Orchid Sign, last month.) They have been invading my thoughts, my dreams, all wanting attention. As the year turns it definitely seems like perfect timing, and I am ready for this now – after spending a couple of years being really confused about what I was ‘supposed’ to be doing. Amazing, to just have that sense that I am doing exactly what I am meant to be doing. I now realise this is what my life has been leading up to. I would be there all the time if I could, just loving whatever I am doing there, but the stormy weather has ensured I spend time getting things done at home on wet days and keeping myself in balance rather than wearing myself out.
This is part of a small woodland that was planted on a coal mine as restoration in the late 1990s. According to old maps there was some woodland here before the mining of the 1960s-80s, but not the same shape as what was replanted. The soil may have been imported, the trees were planted as young whips, (we have lived here long enough to have seen them when tiny) and the site was then pretty much left. How the tree planters chose what they did is unclear, although the majority of trees are native. We have (in approximate decreasing order) oak, ash, lime, alder, birch, sycamore, hawthorn, field maple, dogwood, blackthorn, rowan, cherry, hazel and willow. Some areas have a few of the same type grouped together, others are all mixed up. All of it is overgrown and hard to access.
I have had the advantage of a year of visits to give me a starting point, so I made a plan that I would remove brambles in the areas where they weren’t that dense yet, and try to map what was there to enable me to create a master plan to work towards, much as I have done in our small garden. However, a day or two before the woodland became ours, I had a strong feeling that we should remove the sycamores. I just realised they felt cold to me, quite different from the feeling I got of warmth and light from all the other trees in the wood. Odd that, because I actually quite like sycamores in many places and their timber can be made into many things, being fast growing, light and straight grained. The problem with sycamores is that they have huge leaves which block the light at all levels, and where sycamores grow native species tend to give up. There are enough sycamore woodlands in this area already, here there is an opportunity to do something different if we act fast while most trees only have a diameter of 4 inches or less. And since we need to thin the trees out somehow it makes the choices much simpler.
Therefore my first job has been marking sycamores before they loose their leaves and are harder to identify at a distance – at this age their trunks are often remarkably similar to ash or alder, both of which grow here, although a quick touch gives me the different energy immediately and with practice they become obvious by sight as well as feel. I am glad to say this is creating some small clearings which already feel good, while M is happy that she can do some den building with the branches. The piled up logs now make an excellent place to sit for lunch! Next year I might plant some hazels where there are spaces, given the lack of understory planting at present.
I have managed a bit of bramble bashing, but they seem to grow out of puddles in this weather! Also all the wet weather has shown an urgent need to clear the drainage channels that were created on planting so that they work again – easy and fun where I have cleared the brambles, but trying to do the odd bit of drainage work around even thin strands or bramble or dogrose left me with more cuts and splinters. I’ll learn. Currently my future plans look likely to involve a lot more willow to make use of the excess water, or else a pond!
