in the wood

Given the unseasonably mild weather I thought I'd better finish clearing the last branches and twigs from our last bout of tree work out of the end of the wood, before snowdrops and bluebells were poking up everywhere.  The wood must have been hit by an exceptionally violent gust of wind a couple of years ago, if not a mini tornado, because as well as toppling a multi-stemmed birch and a wild cherry, it half threw some hollies that weren't directly hit by the other trees falling on them.

The birch lodged against some other substantial trees, and there it stayed until we ended up getting professionals in to drop and section it, since it was too big and too heavy for the Systems Administrator to tackle.  I cleared out the debris from the birch some time ago, and by now most of it has been used as firewood, or shredded for mulch.  The cherry was smaller and lighter, and the SA was able to deal with it.  We are most of the way through burning the bigger bits, so today's job was to finish clearing out the brash, the twigs and small ends plus branches of hazel coppice that got broken in the original fall or had to be cut through to extract the remains of the cherry.

Way leads on to way in gardening.  Originally I was just going to clear the debris and thought I'd be finished by lunchtime, but then I began pulling up odd bramble seedlings from around the main snowdrop area, and strands of ivy that were running across the ground.  As I went slightly further into the wood there was an awful lot of ivy, much of it in areas where bluebells should be coming up later, and some thick patches of eager young brambles.  My builders' bucket rapidly filled, and filled again.

I avoid working in the wood when the wind's too strong.  I adore trees, and it would be a sad irony to be killed by one falling on me.  The wet ground in the wood doesn't offer a firm root hold, and the alder coppice stools are old and not particularly sound.  Best to keep out when the wind is blowing, and seize the moment when it's not to do anything that needs to be done.  Today felt like a good day for working among geriatric trees, and I pulled up ivy and brambles with a will, piling up any half rotten pieces of branch into little wildlife habitats.  I found a patch of stinking hellebore, which could be genuinely wild or more likely a garden escape, given I grow it in the borders.  There are a lot of ferns, and they are wild apart from a few very close to the house, but I introduced the primroses.

By the time it got towards dusk and twig-poking-in-the-eye accident time I hadn't quite finished, but had stripped out a lot of brambles and ivy, liberating various wild flowers in the process.  There is opposite leaved golden saxifrage in the damp flushes, which is not rare nationally but is uncommon in eastern England, and does not deserve to have smothering stems of ivy running over it.  There are clumps of campion, but the main beneficiary of the extra light let in by the toppling of the birch and the cherry seems to be wood avens, Geum urbanum.  This species is not content to live in the wood, but tries hard to colonise the garden, where it spreads in weedy and moderately irritating fashion.

We left a good length of the birch trunks lying on the ground for the benefit of wood boring creatures, our largesse partly dictated by the fact that half the tree was already pretty rotten.  A delightful clump of a miniature fern is growing out the root plate, and the tree is regenerating from the base, sending up a cluster of vertical shoots.  Deer or rabbits have nibbled them, but the largest are getting going now and set fair to make another full sized birch with time.  Many woodland and wildlife experts now consider they were too quick to tidy up after the Great Storm of 1987.  Fallen trees will often regenerate given the chance, either shooting from the base of the original trunk or rooting where the fallen trunk touches the ground and then sending up new trunks vertically from the side of the old one.

My aim is to garden the end of the wood nearest the house but with a light touch, giving the ferns and campions light and air to breathe, and introducing a few species of my own that will fit with the woodland vibe and not be invasive.  I don't want the wood to look manicured, but would far rather have a carpet of snowdrops than a solid swathe of ivy.