This re-ignited a previously whetted appetite to own a wood that I had seen. However that one was situated some considerable distance away in the west of County Durham. It consisted of some magnificent broadleaf timber but because of the topography would require the owner to be a direct descendent of a mountain goat from the Grand Canyon fitted with crampons or at least own a helicopter. The carbon footprint to visit this wood would also have been exorbitant.

A couple of visits to Greenridge and meeting my prospective neighbour and also my local manager, David Alty, who was most helpful over the purchasing period, completely convinced me that the chance to contribute to and preserve a ready made piece of our heritage was there for the taking. As well as being able to encourage and sustain some part of our native flora and fauna, which has been so abused and pressurised for years, I would be able to sample the quiet solitude that goes along with tall trees. I would also be preserving something for future generations and reversing the trend of modern man in exploiting everything they touch for a quick buck.

My declaration of intent to purchase when broached to the family was met with slack jawed incredulity and accusations of squandering their inheritance on something for the dogs (well, only partly correct !).

Now finally Greenridge is legally my part of England. None of this “in a corner of some foreign field” rubbish. I have a key for the gate with a very nice fob etched with Woodlands.co.uk., together with a work list which will probably stretch into the next millennium but when the fish pond is in and the bee hives are producing honey for tea and when the broad leaves have been planted then I can sit back and know it was the right thing to do.

• http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/flora-and-fauna/recording-your-bluebells/
• http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/flora-and-fauna/bluebell-survey-2007/

This is an ongoing project, apart from studying the distribution of native and spanish bluebells (and the hybrids, which now may be more common than their Spanish ‘parent’) – the project is also looking at the flowering time of the bluebell (in relation to climate change / variability).  Full details of the project  (and lots of information about bluebells) can be found at the NHM website.

There is an introductory video, which deals with how to identify the different types of bluebell : http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/british-natural-history/survey-bluebells/index.html and also details on how to take part in the survey / project http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/british-natural-history/survey-bluebells/recording/index.html.

Containers are readily available through dealers or can be found on websites such as Ebay.  Their dimensions are pretty standard, being 8 ft wide by 20 foot long.  You can occasionally find smaller ones, usually 10 ft long, but the transport costs will be similar for a small container or a larger one.  The advantage of a smaller container is that in a woodland it is much easier to move. If you are buying one for your woodland you will want to look at it before buying to make sure it is not too rusty.  You might even consider buying a new 20 foot container – at about £1,600 for a 20 ft by 8 ft container the cost is only about £10 per square foot.   In planning terms the use is related to forestry and helpful for management so planners are usually fairly sympathetic as long as the container is sited sensitively and not too near to neighbours or highways.  There is a web site with lots of general information on steel containers at www.containers.co.uk.

Camouflaging your container is a great idea for various reasons – it makes it more secure, as it is less visible to thieves, it is less intrusive for neighbours and it generally feels more “in keeping”.  The main ways to camouflage a shipping container are siting it where it doesn’t stand out and painting it dark green.  Moving these boxes short distances is surprisingly easy – either getting a digger to drag it into position or by using levers and “basic physics”  – a 20ft container weighs about 2 tonnes.  Once in position you can also put some trellis on it and have climbing plants grow over.A container provides an unusually stable structure off which to build other shelters.  For example you can have an awning tied to each of the steel holes at the top (“corner castings”).  The picture here – see  featured image above , from the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire shows how a shelter can be put up based on the container structure.

So the container is providing structure but also security – a nice mix of the industrial and the vernacular.   You can also use container roofs to collect water into a water barrel.  Many people jack up the base of their container to protect the underside but this has another advantage – it creates a secure dry space for small woodland mammals to nest.

The SWA is based at Ironbridge, near Telford in Shropshire.  Many of their initiatives are in the Midlands and centre of the country, which is illustrated by their Heartwoods project. As Jude Walker explains: “this was a £1 million project over 4 years financed by European funding and topped up by the UK. It has helped to bring over 400 hectares of small woodland into management by providing advice and a management service designed for small woodlands.

SWA’s Woodland Initiatives Network has helped provide information and networking to 120 different initiatives around the country since 1992, many of which help people from disadvantaged communities, including many NEETS (16-18 year-olds Not in Employment, Education or Training) and many of these woodland projects have established woodland-related apprenticeships.

Social forestry in small woodlands.

One striking Small Woods project is called Venture Out and Angela Pollard calculates that it has helped almost 5,000 people, which is twice its original target. Venture Out particularly works with “sedentary and hard to reach” communities, and includes what she calls “camp fire therapy”. This means listening and talking therapy in a woodland setting, often sitting around a campfire. This project is particularly for people with issues of mental or physical health and people who do not function well socially. Often these projects are helping those who have been referred by their GP, by mental health departments of health authorities, by school referrals or they are probationers: these projects often have exciting names such as “Amazon Women”.

One tangible result of these social forestry programmes is a reduction in medication and tablets that participants need to take. I asked Angela Pollard which types of SWA social forestry programmes she feels are most cost effective and she singled out volunteer projects, which require only one supervisor for a group doing woodland work – some volunteer projects were part of SWA’s Wye Wood project which included walking, coppice training and a social enterprise.

Branch Out is another SWA project and is based at a woodland belonging to woodlands.co.uk. This is targeted at the particular needs of BME groups (Black, Minority and Ethnic for those not used to the jargon). This is headed by Luke Neal who is managing the wood with the help of his “clients” and others, restoring the woodland and introducing a wider mix of deciduous trees including willow as this is a very wet location.

Membership and events of the Small Woods Association.

The Small Woods Association has almost 2,000 members, mostly individuals, and the members’ services division is headed by Phil Tidey who organises a helpline about woodland issues and also various events around England and Wales. He is also joint editor with Nick Gibbs of the Small Woods magazine and runs a mentoring scheme so that owners of small woods can help each other. Phil attends woodfairs and forestry events for the Small Woods Association, including the APF show (Association of Professional Foresters) and the Weald Woodfair, and he is exploring ways of helping more people to visit small woodlands. The SWA works with many partners in organising events, such as Flora Locale, Confor (Confederation of Forest industries) and the Hampshire-based Sustainability Centre.

Activists for social forestry and promotion of traditional woodland crafts

Recent changes at SWA have been a new logo, revamped website, presence on Twitter and Facebook, and a hope by Jude Walker that the SWA members will be active supporters of their work as well as drawing services from the organisation. After my tour of the SWA Headquarters last week,  I realised that they are neither a nunnery nor a hothouse, but more a mix of a bushcraft training centre and a nest of activists for social forestry.

The flowers are protogynous – that is the flower has a separate male and female phases, with the yellow stigmas (female structures) maturing first.  Protogyny, or indeed protandry, are mechanisms that some plants use to promote the exchange of pollen between different plants – i.e. cross-fertilisation / outbreeding .  The plant is covered with many silky hairs – these are present on the leaves, stem and flowers (see the various images in the gallery below).

Pasqueflowers are long lived perennials that are generally found on south / southwest facing slopes (where they receive plenty of sun), banks or earthworks – particularly in / on (chalk) grassland, where the competition from other plants is limited.  It has a deep tap root, and a rhizome (an underground stem) from which new leaf ‘rosettes’ arise year on year.   The habitats for pasqueflowers (and other species) declined dramatically between 1750 and 1850 as many common lands / meadows / grasslands were enclosed and then ploughed up – for arable crops. These losses were described back in the C19th by the botanist Charles Babington, who said (in his Flora of Cambridgeshire, pub 1860) :

“Until recently most of the chalk district was open and covered with a beautiful coating of turf, profusely decorated with Anemone Pulsatilla (Pulsatilla vulgaris) ………   and other interesting plants. It is now converted into arable land, and its peculiar plants mostly confined to small waste spots by road-sides, pits, and the very few banks which are too steep for the plough.”   That is, the pasqueflower ‘likes’ to grow in undisturbed ground.

A more recent threat to the pasqueflower has been ‘eutrophication of the soil’– that is, the overuse of nitrogenous fertilisers so that nitrogen-loving plants outgrow and overwhelm the grassland plants.  The pasqueflower benefits if grassland is maintained through grazing by sheep.

Though pasqueflowers have been recorded 19 of the Watsonian vice-counties, their distribution is now much more restricted ; being found mainly in eastern, south-eastern and western England.  A recent distribution map of Pulsatilla vulgaris may be found here.

Places where large numbers of pasqueflowers can be seen are listed below (information from Plantlife)

• Barnack Hills & Holes, near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
• Therfield Heath, Royston, Hertfordshire
• Barton Hills, Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire
• Barnsley Warren, Gloucestershire
• Knocking Hoe, near Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire

Some attempts to reintroduce the pasqueflowers to particular areas have meet with failure due to grazing by rabbits though the introduction of winter sheep grazing at some of the larger sites for Pulsatilla has helped increase the number of plants.

The small size and separation of the different sites may represent another threat to the pasqueflowers – the loss of genetic diversity.  Populations of pasqueflowers could be ‘reconnected’ if various arable lands were allowed to revert to grassland – which might allow the plants to spread out over a wider area and encourage out-breeding and gene flow.

Some beautiful, close up images of the pasqueflower may be found at http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/

The pine is extensively and intensively used in forestry, especially in countries like New Zealand (like the Kaingaroa Forest on the North Island).  The monterey pine can be used for erosion control on steep slopes – as it has a widespread and fast growing root system

The growth form of the tree is conic at first, but as the tree ages it becomes dome shaped with heavily, twisted branches.

In California, the height is usually between 50 and 100 ft but it can grow much taller under optimal conditions.  The bark is notably fissured (see image), grey in colour though it can assume a purple black hue with time .

The leaves / needles are bright green, and arranged in threes.  They are quite long (3 to 6 inches) and slender.  The cones are also quite big, sometimes described as ‘fist sized’ – they are brown, long and egg shaped with a prickle associated with each scale.

The cones are also described as serotinous – that is to say, they open up after a forest fire to release the seeds onto the forest floor.  The cone provides protection from the heat of fire together with a mechanism for seed release. In some cones, this involves a resin that ‘seals’ the cone scales shut, but which ‘melts’ when heated.  The ‘ash bed’ present after a fire means that there is an increase in the nutrients in soil and surface layers available to seeds and the process of germination.

Thanks to Dick White (woodlands.co.uk agent, Cornwall and West Devon) for photos

,

Scotland dominates commercial forestry market in the UK

What Tilhill also explain is that Scotland dominates commercial timber growing in the UK – in 2011 it went up to 76% of UK market while Wales is steady at about 5 or 6%. The market in forestry land that gets traded is very small in relation to the total amount of forestry land because there are such vast areas owned by the Forestry Commission and in private estates that don’t change hands – in total Tilhill estimate that less than 1% of the forestry acreage changes hands each year, and even this includes much that is “off-market”.  In total about £50 million worth of forests changed hands over the 12 months.  Interestingly a part of this does actually come from the Forestry Commission who actively sell parts of their forestry estate in Scotland – they sell about £10 million worth each year. They mostly use the proceeds to buy more land for forestry – either to plant new forests or to create woodlands near to towns.

Tilhill offer to help acquire and manage forestry investments

Guy Warren of Tilhill UPM and George McRobbie analyse the forest-product market into three elements: energy or woodfuel (whether pellets or firewood), small roundwood timber and, most valuable, sawlog timber.  All these forestry markets have been buoyant and have been helped by the lower value of sterling and the historically high price of oil.  However, values of growing trees in the forest are still very variable with important factors being geographical location in relation to a timber mill and the costs of extraction in any particular woodland.  Tilhill offer a service where they will assess this sort of thing for a prospective buyer and produce a valuation and cashflow projection for a particular forest, although their view is that the ideal investment is over £500,000.  This is because a reasonable size is more economical in covering the fixed costs of management and smoothing the lumpiness of income from thinning and harvesting.  Their acquisition fee is typically about 2% of the purchase price (or guide price) but there are also costs of legal fees and stamp duty meaning that the cost of getting into a forestry investment will be about 5-6% of the agreed price.

Is commercial forestry a buy or a sell?  Tilhill and Savills discuss the pros and cons

An informal partnership between Tilhill UPM and Savills means that they can give strong property acquisition advice (Savills) as well as offering hands-on management services (Tilhill) though those at their presentation sensed that they do not share exactly the same perspective on the current market with Jonathan Henson of Savills indicating that the market was a bit toppy and that owners might think now was a good opportunity to sell with plenty of demand “out there”.  This is perhaps confirmed by the fact that Tillhill’s 2011 report shows that almost all forestry properties in Scotland sell at above the guide price and often as much as 50% above it.  Against this Ali Gemmell was more bullish on forestry prospects and felt the extras were helpful – the chance of income from telecom masts, minerals, sporting income and hydro or wind projects.  Leisure developments also have some impetus from the increasing number of people visiting woodlands which according to the Forestry Commission figures increased between 2002 and 2004 from 20 million forest visits to about 60 million per year, the level that it stands at now.

For those principally interested in small woodlands,  Tilhill’s report is interesting in showing that many of the same factors that affect commercial forestry are driving the market in small woodlands – demand for woodfuel, amenity, timber land as a safe haven and negative real interest rates.

Despite some savagely cold dawns, a couple of weeks of unseasonably warm weather has transformed the woodland.  It has been more of a boom than a Spring bloom this year. My hornbeam is in leaf, the hawthorn is in blossom, the bluebells are now nearly eight inches long and have started to throw up the occasional flower. The primroses are in full flush, I have a few violets but the really special surprise is the wood anemones that have suddenly appeared. Each year they are a lovely surprise, unlike the bluebells – who carpet the woodland in green before the big event and whose progress I seem to monitor. The wood anemone blooms into life ; its delicate flower really is the herald that ‘Spring has sprung‘ and summer is on its way.

The ash trees and oaks will soon fill in the canopy and offer dappled shade. I have already set aside a place in my head for a hammock for this summer, and hope to be able to slope off for a quiet afternoon siesta. I’m a huge fan of hammocks both for having a crafty hours rest; I also have a Hennessy hammock tent if I need to stay overnight in a wood. This fantastic piece of kit can be set up in a minute and not only provides a weather proof place to sleep but also is totally bug proof and being suspended means you not only avoid having a root in the small of your back but you escape any crawling insects. If you’re e looking for a simple solo sleeping solution I couldn’t recommend it strongly enough.

As I’ve said before these are the months to sit back and enjoy your woodland. It’s too late to plant trees unless they are already well established and you can water them regularly. All felling and stacking of wood should have been done and your time in your wood should be about enjoyment.

Nesting birds will be busy. All species of deer will now be heavily pregnant, even the roe who have delayed implantation are now well on their way. Foxes and badgers will have taken to their dens and the cycle of rebirth has begun again.

Each day my wife has seen a big dog fox ambling through the wood, scrubbing up grubs. At this time of year, they seem to get quite stupid and seem at a loss without the vixens that are generally tucked up underground. As long as he stays off the lambing fields on the marsh, he will be fine.

This really is a time to enjoy your woodland. A time to sit contemplate and decide if this year is one for a project. Perhaps some thinning in December or planting November. But till then just a place to put your feet up in, and escape from the world that seems to get more busy by the day.

Kind regards,
Matt Marples.
East Anglia Manager.
Woodlands.co.uk.

Attitudes to these pigs / boars fall into two broad categories :

• those who welcome the return / reintroduction of a missing species and its ecological impact
• those who have a more negative perception of the boar – in that, they do damage, have the potential to harbour disease and can cause direct damage to people.

However, little investigative work has been done on the effects of boar on wildlife in the U.K, and their present distribution is limited.

Wild boar are omnivorous, that is, they eat a wide variety of things throughout the different seasons.  The diet may include invertebrates (beetles, worms etc), amphibians and small mammals though the bulk of the material ingested is fruits, bulbs and tubers.  These are found through their rooting activities.  It is the disturbance to soil and vegetation caused by rooting around for food, especially in agricultural land next to woodland, that has cause concern.  Rooting can cause physical disruption to plant communities, and it has been suggested that bluebells (in particular) could suffer.  Little research into this topic has been done, though Sims looked at recovery after rooting activity (2005, PhD thesis, University of Sussex).

DEFRA and the Forestry Commission recently supported a project on the impact of wild boar on biodiversity (both flora and fauna).  The study was carried out in woodlands in Kent and East Sussex, where there are ‘established’ free living population(s) of wild boar.  The study involved transects, quadrats and pitfall traps to assess the impact / effect of the wild boar on both plant and animal populations / communities.

The results indicate that if boar populations and rooting activities remain at current levels then, in the short term, bluebells are not unduly threatened though there might be a reduction in the amount of flowering.

The effect, if any, of their activities on trees may not be apparent for some years but it is possible that

• Damage to roots might allow for the entry of pathogens
• Water and mineral uptake could be affected
• The quantity of oak and beech mast (which provide valuable food for boar) if eaten regularly and consistently may be depleted affecting the regeneration / establishment of these tree species
• The rooting could create a good seed bed for the germination and growth of various woodland species.

The work of Harmer, Straw and Williams who undertook this most recent investigation into boar activity is to be found in the Quarterly Journal of Forestry – entitled Boar, bluebells and beetles.   It is also available as a downloadable pdf file.

Links to boars and biodiversity

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/britain-boar011.html#cr

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/2011/09/wild-boar-not-bad-for-biodiversity-in.html

The process has taught me a lot, not least because it showed me how ignorant I was about the economics of domestic energy use – whilst we all know the cost of petrol few of us are aware of the price of a unit of domestic electricity – maybe physical volumes are easier to understand than something that goes down wires and is measured in confusing units.

Our 19 solar panels produce about 3.5 kilowatts, so if our annual production is about 1,000 hours we should produce 3,500 kwH of energy which turns out to be a high proportion of our domestic useage. Many British homes consume about this amount each year, so if I am able keep our consumption down we might even become net exporters.

Producing renewable energy has a surprising and almost miraculous effect on the producer which other observers have confirmed: one might think that people who generate electricity would become profligate in their energy use, but in fact the opposite effect is much more common. When you know how hard it is to generate power you tend to want to reduce your own consumption. In my case, I have replaced all our light bulbs with low energy bulbs. The effect on consumption is amazing – many of the 50 watt bulbs have been replaced with 5 watt bulbs which give out a similar amount of light – yes that’s right they use one tenth as much electricity! It’s amazing how many people worry about turning lights off while those lights that they are using consume ten times as much as they need to. But whilst all this economising is very worthwhile it does not capture the main area of energy consumption in most British homes which is heating – to put this in perspective my own annual energy bills look like this: electricity – 6,000, gas 24,000. (all in kilowatt hours). That’s right, we use 4 times as much energy for heating as we do for lighting.

This high cost of heating explains why the really big energy savings are to be made in insulation and heating systems and it also explains why the Forestry Commission and others feel that woodfuel use is so important. For many people one reason for buying a wood of their own is that they can grow their own woodfuel (and of course the process of collecting and processing also creates “warmth” through exercise). But there are interesting comparisons to be made between the economics of solar and woodfuel which you gather from your own woodland. First of all the solar panels will use the sun more efficiently than trees do. Panels can collect about 20% of the energy that lands on them compared to a theoretical physical maximum of about 27%.

By contrast only 2% of solar energy which lands on plants is used and much of that is not converted into timber. So the trees convert vastly less of the sun’s energy but they are, of course, covering a far larger surface area of land. So how much useable timber is produced from a woodland? Foresters measure this in terms of “yield class” –  where a woodland of yield class 10, for example, produces 10 tonnes per hectare each year. This means that a 7.5 acre woodland (3 hectares) might grow 30 tonnes of timber each year. Excluding the summer months that’s about a tonne of firewood each week, which is more than would be needed for heating a single dwelling. That firewood can be looked at in terms of its calorific value where in principle a tonne of firewood can produce about 4,000 kwH, so to heat a house like mine you would need about 6 tonnes of firewood each year, which is the timber grown on about 1.5 to 2 acres of woodland.

Having used firewood in the past for heating,  I know that  production of woodfuel such as logs makes you much more careful not to waste energy. It would seem sensible for the government to incorporate this observation into energy policy: if the government wants to see the population save energy through insulation and use of more economical appliances, it should perhaps have a policy of encouraging as many individuals as possible to become producers of green energy – including encouraging people to grow their own woodfuel.