John Keats wrote about fruits in his well known poem “Autumn”. But to ecologists fruits are an essential part of the story. Without a successful seed dispersal mechanism plant species cannot spread any great distance. Those that have the most successful seed dispersal mechanism are the ones which spread most quickly (think of arable weeds colonising fresh turned soil).

We try to emulate nature by planting seeds, but in my experience we are mere amateurs compared to Mother Nature. I prefer to let nature get on with it (although I can’t resist having a go at growing my own too).

We forget at our peril that fruits and seed dispersal are an essential part of improved biodiversity. This is the time of year when it becomes most obvious.

Changing climate means changes to the plants and animals at Wilderness Wood. Why is this? Whilst the trees still look green, a walk around the wood will reveal lots of premature yellows. Plants need water to grow and there is precious little of it to be found in the soil and certainly not in the stream or ponds. Lack of rainfall in the summer and blistering temperatures mean any winter rainfall counts for nothing by August. More resilient (dare I say Mediterranean) species of plant and animal will surely replace the current ones. At least you won’t need to increase your carbon footprint by flying to Spain in search of sun, sea and sand.

Further conservation efforts over Woody Week and since are carried out in the hope that they will be rewarded at some future date. Sometimes conservation can be tough, especially when nature casts your efforts aside. However, it can be incredibly rewarding to discover your efforts have born fruit perhaps years down the line. Bat Park is doing this in spades, whilst our efforts to mitigate against climate change by building leaky dams and ponds is a project awaiting full fruition. Read this post again in a couple of years time and then draw your own conclusions.

Leaky Dams are not the latest ‘skateboard’ craze (although you could easily make one by recycling a number of these discarded items found on the bed of the Sussex Ouse). They are an integral part of the UK’s strategy to alleviate river flooding. Would the floods of 2000 in Uckfield and Lewes have happened if the headwaters of the Sussex Ouse been fully fitted with leaky dams? I suspect not!

The imminent ‘Woody Week’ activities drive the conservation volunteers to source construction materials from the wood, whilst I indulge in a bit of grass strewing, recording plants at Bat Park and discussions about our dam building project during ‘Woody Week’.

Yes conservation is my main focus but other activities are also focused on at Wilderness Wood.

Drought has bitten hard into the wildlife of Wilderness Wood. Adding water to keep ‘young’ whips alive is a desperate measure, whilst the Wilderness Stream and all the ponds have run dry. All that is except in one choice area. At least a dry stream bed is a good place to build new leaky dams and even more permanent earth dams.

One way or another we have to find ways of retaining water in the wood.

May supposedly brings forth flowers after April showers. Well April has been pretty dry, as has May, but at least we have a few flowers to write home about.

Conservation issues include managing our threatened orchids and considering how best to encourage our Bat Park hedge to grow. It’s all about the bracken I suspect.

Some parts of Wilderness Wood appear to be weathering the spring drought better than others. Despite the Wilderness Stream already running dry, the pond’s it supplies water to look good and will soon be witness to tadpoles in the form of escaping frogs. Elsewhere the woods look pretty dry.

Orphaned oaks have a future at Wilderness Wood even if the Highways Authority sees fit to cut down their mother tree. They arrive just in time for planting whilst spring flowers and butterflies are well into their annual parade of colours.

All animals (ourselves included) stick to old habits and follow desire lines. We can see these demonstrated around Wilderness Wood, especially by the large number of deer populating our small area of woodland. What can we do about this?

Even plants have their own desire lines and maintain old habits. Our Bat Park grassland and heathland habitats are developing, but not necessarily along the lines we would wish. Plants spread through seed dispersal and will grow wherever the conditions suit them. This can be most irritating since grassland can quickly turn to heathland and heathland to woodland, unless we find a way to deflect them from their desire lines and habits which have evolved over millions of years. It all means extra work for the conservationist.

The Today programme has announced that spring is here.I have to agree when the sun is so bright that my solar panels produce nearly 20kwh of electricity. The arrival of spring of course is a gradual and often intermittent process (although my BBC weather app says we have bright sunshine for the next week at least).

Spring is a good time to get down to doing all those projects put on the back-burner over the winter. At Wilderness Wood a small group of Stewardship Saturday volunteers followed suit and planted black poplar saplings and knocked-up a woven chestnut fence around a pond, to exclude unwanted people and dog ingress.

Black poplars and frogs have much in common. Both love wetland areas and both support a wide range of species. Today they have something else in common - they are recorded species at Wilderness Wood. The poplars are part of a national drive to save this endangered British tree species. We acquired 8 saplings from Wakehurst Place a few days ago, with three of them already planted in our area of wet woodland. The frogs are well established in our new ponds but have really outdone themselves this year.

Although we are still in the depths of winter and perhaps the most dangerous time of year for conservation work (I’m afraid you’ll have to read the post for the details), conservation work continues at Wilderness Wood. Not much by way of visible wildlife, but just like with vegetable gardening, much of the most important work gets done at this time of year.

Nature Reserves come in all shapes and sizes and serve different purposes. Wilderness Wood is striving to improve its biodiversity but can be a victim of its own success, drawing large numbers of urban visitors to enjoy a day amongst trees and wildlife. But its greatest value to nature conservation has to be its role in hooking visitors into conservation and rewilding appreciation, in a way that would not be possible for large wildlife rich nature reserves and wild space in more hard to reach locations.

As promised just a week ago, a group of volunteers set out to carry out remedial work in an attempt to bring back life to an ancient beech tree, by rerouting a badly eroded footpath and by adding piles of soil, leaf litter and logs to improve the water retention of the soil. With our ever-drying summer weather this may be the only chance we have of saving this gigantic old beech tree.

Bat Park is slowly turning into a unique area of Wilderness Wood, designated as acid lowland grassland, with adjacent heathland. Very few trees grow in this slice of the wood, but lots of other species not found elsewhere at Wilderness Wood and only rarely in the rest of The High Weald. We hope to have a few Bast Park Open Days this year when the public will be able to attend a guided tour of the site and see how nature is progressing.

Deep in Wilderness Wood there sits a very big beech tree. It will come as no surprise that it has been awarded the name of Big Beech. It has probably stood here for anything from 200 to 400 years. I suspect at least 300.

Big Beech could well be dying due to a number of factors, not least summer drought caused by The Climate Change Emergency. However we have a plan to resurrect this iconic tree.

Water management at Wilderness Wood is an increasingly worrying problem. Summer drought and winter flood are both issues that need to be addressed.

It is late December and winter is really setting in. Surely no self-respecting creature is going to show itself at this time of year! A nice long hibernation sleep sounds pretty attractive to me. But not so. Temperatures are still above zero for most of the day and there is still food to be found if you know where to look.

It’s the winter solstice. Dark, cold and miserable. Cheer up - time for a song, some poetry, flaming torches, lots of alcohol and some odd looking life forms down at Wilderness Wood.