Hot and Dry - it must be August at Wilderness Wood
The trees in the valley bottom still look green but could the grassland of Bat Park be the vegetation in 2100?
So how are we doing in 2025? Like the rest of the UK, Wilderness Wood is being battered by dry weather and consistently high temperatures. Not the highest by any means for Sussex, with that record at 37.6C going to Herstmonceux on 19th July 2022, but with high temperatures and so little rain for the last four months, the woodland plants and animals are really up against it.
I dug a hole in the so-called wet woodland next to the largely dry Wilderness Stream a couple of weeks ago and it filled with water about 20cm below the surface. Most plants would probably manage to get roots that deep, but that's not the case this week. Dry as a bone. The stream itself ran dry back in May and the little rain we've had since then has been swallowed up by the parched soil and thirsty roots of the wood.
The new ponds dug in 2022 likewise ran dry by May with very few young froglets spotted after this spring’s spawning fest. At least the Broad-leaved Pond Weed is still green, taking some moisture from the muddy sediment left behind.
Spare a thought for the 8 little Black Poplar whips we planted in the damper parts of the wood in February. Only one looks like it is still hanging on.
This Black Poplar sapling planted in February is probably the only one still surviving in what was wet woodland
Moving to Bat Park it's the same old story. Here our attempts to coax the hedge into life has involved work parties removing bracken and using it as a mulch for the shrubs. Every week I water the plants but is it enough? Only time will tell.
September will be the make or break month I suspect. A good drenching and all will be well again, but an Indian Summer will potentially be devastating.
At least the highly resilient Common Heather shrubs in the heathland are doing well and giving the wood a lovely pink glow wherever it grows. Somehow it has spread all over the wood these last few dry years and it wouldn't surprise me if by 2100 Wilderness Wood and many others in Sussex look like the heathland of Ashdown Forest.
Seven years ago Bat Park was bare soil. The heather is self-seeded, undaunted by our changing climate. For any given climate there will always be a vegetation type which will benefit from it.
A changing climate inevitably means changes to our vegetation and likewise the animal life of Wilderness Wood. Thank goodness we are not animals. I’d hate to be in their predicament!
David Horne 13/8/25