Alhampton Open Gardens
The determination of youth …
…Or, in this case – no, it’s not an elephant – of young trees.
When our first whips (a young, slender, unbranched tree, often one to three years old, typically sold bare-rooted, basically a stick) arrived we asked the Woodland Trust for tree guards to protect the precious babies from the predations of rabbits and deer. There are plenty of both species in this part of Somerset and most of us have seen the damage they can do, either by nibbling off the bark (the vital covering that transports nutrition from leaf to root) or, in the case of deer, rubbing the bark off, nibbling the whole thing and – worst case – knocking the whole plant over.
After a bit of back and forth they agreed and supplied us with support stakes and tubes, about a metre tall by, say, a handspan in diameter, pale green, translucent and smooth … which is why our early photographs show fields of green plastic tubes…
Later on during the planting, a new design came – same dimensions but this time dark green grids with small, clear plastic windows all over – maybe with the idea that the trees would benefit from more light?
There wasn’t much of a plan beyond letting the little things settle in, getting their roots down without interference from outside agencies, in their own private spaces. When we asked about how long they could stay in the tubes, replies were a bit vague – maybe five years, they said. Anyway, don’t worry, they said, if the trees get too big the tubes are designed to split down an in-built perforation, so no problem.
Anyway, long story short, the trees liked their new home – 28 acres of regularly fertilised ex-farmland, sheltered from the worst nature could throw at them – and they grew and grew, heading for the light overhead as fast as they could go. After a year or three we began to think they’re big enough to withstand most things now and we were rather sick of the sight of so much plastic, so maybe we should begin to let them out in the big world. Besides, we’d have to start thinking about what to do with the tubes, with thousands to deal with, after removal …but that’s another story altogether…
The removal took a while and in the process we discovered there are pros and cons for tree guards. The pros were as outlined above, the cons slightly unexpected: firstly, a few in a stand of silver birch had done so well that not only were they trying to burst out of their tubes down the aforesaid perforations, but a handfull had built up such condensation within their now strait-jackets that, sadly, they had rotted off at the bottom. It was heart-breaking – otherwise healthy, twelve feet plus of silver birch without the strength to hold themselves up and no way of saving them.
The second con – to do with the type of tube – was the point of this post. The ritzier looking (ie newer) design had a completely unforeseen drawback. In their vigorous attempts to reach the outside world, some of the whips got caught on the pastic grids in the walls of their protection and rather than simply give up, or put out a new shoot to go round the problem, they continued upwards by going downwards and then up again into free space and this is what they look like now…
All photographs here are thanks to Rose Hubbard as (not) always, (but nearly) the case. They’re not everyone’s thing and theoretically these trees should probably be among the first to be culled as we need to thin out patches of the wood, but a few of us have become rather attached to them – they’ve shown such zest for life, such determination to keep going regardless and are worthy of respect for that alone. Chances are Rose has more pictures, from further away and if you dislike these, because they’re just plain weird, perhaps a different perpective could change your mind. However, for the moment at least they’re staying…
Water, water everywhere…
…Well, not the salty kind, here in the middle of Somerset, but our usual Novemberish grey drizzle, interspersed with the heavy stuff.
With all the water outside (sitting inside at midday, with the lights on) it seems a good idea to give an update on the pond for some reason. Eleven years on from when it was carved out, looking like a man-made reservoir, it’s settled in rather nicely and the local wildlife has certainly found it.
Hundreds of toads, Great Crested and smooth newts and frogs have continued to visit every spring (one of those mystical things where they are all drawn to their favourite mating ground at the same time) and each year our Toad Patrols (see original post here) are out in HiViz with torches and buckets, rescuing them from doom under the wheels of passing traffic. Slightly later on the pond is used by house martins, swooping in to collect water to build their nests or snack on any small flies and later the coots come to nest on the island or in surrounding undergrowth. We have a few resident barn owls, a selection of corvids and have been visited by swans and geese – though they never stay too long – and seagulls (inevitably – they live at the local tip) and the odd heron. Of course I’ll have missed something out, so feel free to fill in the gaps in the comments.
On the down side, despite the signs we put up every year asking people to keep their dogs out of the pond for the sake of the wildlife (it was one the things asked for by the local community after all), there are always people who use it as a playground for their animals, being too idle to find one of the many other water sources round here. Some wrench the signs out of the ground and hurl them into the water, presmably to show their disdain, though it’s more of an indication of their ignorance about the reasons the pond is there in the first place. As the water’s not very deep I’m guessing it’s not great returning home with a mud-stinking beast in the back of your car, but what do I know?
With the pond’s maturity has come congestion in the form of a couple of plant encroachers. The clumps of bulrushes Typha latifolia that some kind soul donated in the early days, perhaps to soften the edges (at least we think it was meant as a kind gesture, though no-one ever confessed) are becoming a massive problem as they’ll fill all the available clear water, combined with an innocent looking broad-leaved surface plant Potamogeton Natans. We’ve been trying for a few years now to get the problem sorted – see the report commissioned here – and with other changes that are on the horizon I’m optimistic that something may happen soon. It’s a case of watch this space again, but that’s all I can say for now.
We’re back! …well
…we’ve not actually been away, but life rather took over for a while – not least with COVID – for which apologies. That’s not to say that nothing has been happening in the wood. Quite the contrary. People on the Friends list have been updated regularly by email, it’s just that the authors of this blog have been shamefully neglectful and it’s well past time that the situation was rectified. One more thing: this particular post is entirely my take. I’ll be doing my best to bully and/or conjole others to add their thoughts in other posts…
Ok, so since I last wrote, events have continued much as before, or even more so – some fundraisers, others maintenance, with other, newer ones added to the mix – including: volunteer work parties; Toad Patrols; wild beehives; Open Gardens; merchandising and for the last three years, Apple Day. There have been changes to the Friends Committee too, bringing in much needed new and younger blood and throughout it all the wood itself has kept growing and maturing, obviously, the pond has settled into its surroundings and in fact it all now looks very grown up indeed.
Rather than trying to fill in the last five years in chronological order, there will be more on all these things in posts to come, though that’s all for now
Shop for Christmas with Haddon Wood!
For the obvious current reason, we’ve had to cancel all fundraising events this year, but while Haddon belongs to the Woodland Trust, it has evolved from day one to the place it is today because of our group of Friends and the FHW committee who put in all the tweaks to make it stand out from the competition: the variety of paths to make walking interesting, for instance and the day to day maintenance, bug hotels, bee hives, willow teepee and toad patrols. What I’m working up to saying, in a rather roundabout way, is that there is a both a raising awareness element and cost element to all of this. and to help solve both of these issues at once, Rose works incredibly hard to produce a range of goodies that in this case may well help to solve your Christmas problems!
As a starter, our Christmas cards come in packs of 6 and are made with recycled card and are selling fast. Just £5.00 for a pack of 6 (see below).
SOLD OUT!
If you’d like to order anything from this page, please fill out the form below…
Our first beehive has arrived!
The wait is over – see Rose’s brilliant photos below of our new wild bee hive. As of yesterday it’s sitting in state at the top of the hill in F4.
The pictures speak for themselves really, but they show Matt Somerville, his daughter Beth and her boyfriend Spencer working to assemble and install the hive. We haven’t been able to put signs up yet, but please give it a wide berth for the moment – particularly because with this fine weather we may be lucky and see a swarm take up residence over the next week or so.
The body of the hive is made of larch, the legs are sweet chestnut, both of which are the best woods for the job. The hackle (thatched roof) is sewn on and is insulated with straw, the hive has been primed by Matt with some pieces of old comb, and rubbed with lemon grass oil and resin from old hives to attract new bees. If you’d like to know more, look at Matt’s website https://beekindhives.uk/ It’s fascinating stuff – bees are extraordinary.
This is the first of two hives we’re putting in the wood. The timing of the second will depend on Matt, who, like so many of us, has had work turned upside down by you-know-what, so we’re letting him come back with the second when he can.
Isn’t it great to have something good to celebrate!
Rather than the public event we had wanted this to be, the hive raising was attended only by Hil and Rose who supplied this post, observing all relevant social distancing constraints
NB Please note we’ve been advised by a local beekeeper that it’d be aswas to stay at least 30 feet from the hive, because Some colonies can be extremely defensive and as their provenance isn’t known, they could be pussycats or tigers. Temperament can also change without warning. Passing this on in the interests of high bees and people.
Ducklings!
Rose managed to get some shots of this year’s ducklings, though, sadly, their numbers seem to drop by the day. There is/are? a surprising number of predators about anyway, but it’s yet another reason to keep dogs out of the pond!
Good News for Toads!
Posted by Dave Boyer (local toad patrol coordinator, Reptile and Amphibian Group for Somerset) to Castle Cary Real News on 5th April 2020…
Toad patrol a fantastic success – finally, a good news story in these trying times!
Hundreds of toads have been helped to cross a busy local road by a group of volunteers and have now bred successfully in a wildlife pond at Haddon Wood.
In early February a lorry driver, doing the night shift for Barbers Cheesemakers at Ditcheat, noticed masses of toads crossing the road near the Cary Rugby Club, and many were being squashed by passing vehicles. She contacted the Reptile and Amphibian Group for Somerset who in turn contacted me, a local toad patrol coordinator.
With the help of the Friends of Haddon Wood and local Somerset Wildlife Trust members a toad patrol was operating within 48 hours.
Over the next five weeks 31 volunteers took turns to patrol a 400 m stretch of the Brooke House Inn to Ditcheat road at Haddon Wood, on any evening when the weather was toad-friendly – wet and warm. Volunteers would don hi-viz jackets and gloves, and patrol the road with bright torches and a bucket, picking up any toads crossing the road and moving them into the safety of Haddon Wood.
These toads would have all hatched over the previous few years in the pond at Haddon Wood and now, with spring approaching, they were returning to their natal pond to breed.
In total 435 toads were helped across the road, along with three great crested newts and eight other newts, most probably common newts. Unfortunately 48 toads were also found squashed (a 10% loss is typical for many patrolled toad crossings). The migration across the road had already started when the patrols started so we do not know the true number of toads that crossed, or were killed. Of course the patrols were only active until 22h30 when fewer vehicles were on the road and many more toads would have crossed after this.
By mid-March the pond was inundated with toad-spawn, and some frog-spawn, testament to the success of the patrols.
How do you walk in Haddon Wood …and in fact anywhere else?
At the moment the answer should be ‘I don’t, if I have to drive there’.
If you don’t agree/believe me, see this post from the Woodland Trust .. https://friendsofhaddonwood.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1748&action=edit ..It says, among other things, Our estate remains open but only if you can access it from your home without driving
Not only the Woodland Trust, but the National Parks are closing for the first time in their history and the National Trust has retracted its offer to open parks and gardens, because people are taking advantage and ignoring the social distancing rule.
The reason that they’ve all felt the need to do this is that people don’t seem to understand that this is the worst worldwide crisis since the Spanish flu pandemic at the end of WWI. It’s like the Foot & Mouth catastrophe, with knobs on.
As for my headline, I’m not referencing anything to do with Monty Python ministries in this post, as I hope the rest of it clarifies. Perhaps I’d have been clearer if I asked why you walk, but the answer to that more than likely would be the obvious: ‘because I need to get from A to B’; or ‘because my dog needs the exercise’; or even a sarky ‘because I can’. At the moment, though, with Coronavirus so much at the forefront of our minds, the answer is likely to be because ‘I’ve been told I can go outside once a day to exercise’. All of the above seem like perfectly reasonable responses to me. …at least I thought that was what I thought.
But exercise is the point here. We’re told that at the moment, while the country is in virtual lockdown, we are allowed to go outside once a day for exercise. So what I mean by the original question is do you walk with purpose, or wander vaguely? Do you stroll, chatting to others from the group you’re quarantined with, stopping to wait for others to catch up? Do you block gateways or junctions of crossing paths, to send text messages? Until the recent lockdown none of this was a problem, anything I thought about, but suddenly, in the last week or so, whilst living restrictions have been relatively simple, walking the dogs has become fraught.
More people than I’d have guessed think exercise is just a good excuse to go outside. On the other hand I’ve realised that I walk, not just to enjoy the countryside and watch the changing seasons – I work outside anyway, so can do all of that then, after all – but because my dogs need to get out, only once a day at the moment, read the local peemail and break up their day from the usual four walls and small yard they’d otherwise be confined to, but mostly to stretch their legs. We don’t go for gentle, vague strolls.
There are people around right now who aren’t normally here in quantity and some of them really do seem to be treating this critical situation like a holiday. They go for walks in large groups. The rule is no more than two at a time, people! The thing is, other people need to walk their dogs in Haddon and the lanes around on a regular basis but Alhampton is a tiny village! Lots of residents are permanently local, self-isolating and afraid. Add to that that spaceous as the wood is, the number of pinch points – like gateways, hedge-obscuring sightlines, slip throughs and path crossings – there are in Haddon make walking at a distance from others difficult. Can you begin to see their problem with groups of people just getting outside.
You may have noticed that in present circumstances I’m not as tolerant of others as I’ve liked to think I am. I’m not walking in Haddon at the moment because the friend over there I often walk with is self-isolating and it seems a bit selfish to drive there and add to the numbers anyway, when I can walk from my house and as it turns out, according to the Woodland Trust, I’m doing the right thing. Go me! But, even where I live, all sorts of people who wouldn’t normally be seen in a field are wandering about, ignoring the two metre rule and generally aggravating the sh*t out of the rest of us! There, I’ve admitted it. I’m both self-righteous and selfish.
The bottom line is that we’re lucky, aren’t we, to have such a lovely place to walk, in Haddon Wood and even luckier, in recent days, that the weather has been smiling, after such long and dispiriting period of rain. It’s been the easy option for many, but it’s the only one for quite a few and maybe at the moment, just for a while, the rest of us need to stay away. Either that or pray for the foul weather to return…
November 30th is National Tree Charter Day and the Friends of Haddon Wood wanted to mark that by holding a celebration of light amongst the trees at Haddon Wood. There will be a Barbecue, mulled cider and hot chocolate on sale and a chance to buy your Haddon Wood Christmas cards plus woodland wands! Weather depending…! All welcome.
The Friends of Haddon Wood 