Woody Week Eco-warriors (part two)

Conservation work is the bedrock of our efforts to improve the environment, but it goes hand in hand
with inspirational art works such as this owl sculpture created during Woody Week

The last week has seen a lot of activity at Wilderness Wood, not least on the conservation front. My last missive outlined the work of our Woody Week Eco-warriors last Tuesday. On the Wednesday of Woody Week the Eco-warriors gathered again, this time focussed upon salvaging the hedge shrubs planted in 2020 at Bat Park. If this ever finally transitions from a row of 9-inch saplings into a full blown hedge, I fear it won’t be in my life-time. But faith (or maybe just hope) drives me on. In my turn I drive the labours of the Eco-warriors!

Two years ago we rescued 150 saplings from the smothering bracken fronds at Bat Park by pulling out the latter with our bare (well actually gloved) hands. Pulling bracken is however merely a temporary solution, as the rhizomes of the mother plant just send up more. Did you know that a swarm of bracken fronds is not a collection of individuals, but all are just bits of the one individual largely hidden below-ground, sending out thousands of new fronds every year?

So we were back again pulling out a few thousand more in the hope that our hedge shrubs might finally climb out of the shade of the bracken fronds. Our efforts of two years ago were rewarded with quite a few plants finally achieving this status, but many did not make it to this year and I suspect a lot more will give up the ghost over the rest of this summer. This time we lay the pulled bracken down as a mulch around the saplings, to retain what little summer rainfall comes our way.

Our Bat Park Hedge is still very much a work in progress

Then we were down to the new ponds in the lower wood to control the growth of vegetation there. First however, Tim was to demonstrate the water sampling technique he employs back home with his fishing buddies. I find him just about the only small body of water to test in the entire wood, since by July the wood is as dry as the pubs in North Wales used to be on a Sunday (I recall this bit of sad history from my University student days on field trips to Snowdonia). His technique is to ‘kick sample’ the water and record whatever appears in his net.

This is my chance to sneak off and finish securing the leaky dams built yesterday with long screws - to dissuade den-building children from running off with our branches.

By the time Tim has finished floundering about in muddy water and has discovered that the ‘Wilderness Puddle’ has only blood worms and a couple of water mites in it, it is time to make our way back up for lunch.

They struggled for several more days of Woody Week supervised by the fully recovered Josh. This included restoring an area of the wood formerly used for storing piles of gravel and ‘Fittleworth’ stone used in path repairs. The addition of soil followed by wild flower seed and a covering of saw-dust and leaf-litter should do the trick. A hand made bench, put in place next to the path at ‘Poet’s Corner’, was identified as being a bit of a white elephant since users of the bench inevitably trampled the wild flowers it was set amongst. The best of intentions can be thwarted by the multitude of feet gathering at such a honey-pot location. Lesson learned, the group removed the offending bench and relocated it in a less sensitive area of the wood.

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It is Wednesday and I’m back in the wood but the conservation volunteers have been co-opted into assisting with the planking of several Western Red Cedar trees to be added to a new wood store. This means I’m working alone. I check out the Black Poplars planted in the Wet Woodland in the lower wood. Sadly the wet woodland is now bone dry thanks to only a sprinkling of rainwater over the last few months. Black Poplar likes a damp soil, which is in short supply this year. Only one specimen of the 8 planted in February looks likely to survive.

Last week Josh and I excavated clay and piled it up into an earth dam across the former course of the Wilderness Stream. A new pond is accumulating water behind this dam and along with the two built in previous years is the only permanent body of water in the wood. I add further clay to the dam as I stand in welly-deep water which I fear I am unable to extricate myself from. With just a centimetre of freeboard I finally escape from the sucking wet clay which firmly held my boots.

I go on to check the new leaky dams created above Streamside last week, which I’m still expecting to show their worth once the winter rains turn the Wilderness Stream into a boiling torrent in October or November, before returning to the hedge at Bat Park to water our poor beleaguered saplings.

Leaky dams and some judicious excavation work should control water flow and even retain some as in-line ponds

Conservation work at Wilderness Wood largely involves taking action in the hope that in future months, or even years, your efforts will finally be rewarded. We do try to work with the grain of nature, but sometimes nature can be a fickle bedfellow.

David Horne 6th August 2025