One thing I want to do with this site is to "bio-blitz" our few acres. Blitz is probably another exaggeration - what I really mean is study or catalogue. The concept of a bio-blitz it to descend on a site and to record in a day as many species of flora and fauna that you can. Hopefully I have a peaceful 25 years or more to list everything I can find.
I have never owed a wood and my knowledge of trees, wildflowers, even mushrooms is lamentable. I am essentially a birder with a sideline addiction to high end safaris. Owning a small wood has to be viewed as a privilege and it is certainly going to be a challenge, We moved into the Barn on 28 th February, After poring over every room in the house for an age Jane and I headed off to look at the garden, outbuildings, the pond and after a good 40 minutes of soaking up the garden, the wood.
We have two and a half acres of deciduous woodland which can be best described as a tear shape at the bottom of our garden. The border with the wood along the Southern edge of the garden (the woods Northern boundary) is about 80 m long and then each of the roughly 3 other sides is well over 100 m in length. It is big enough and thick enough so that you have no idea of its size when you are in its middle. Down its Western edge it borders with the gardens of the manor house and an associated cottage next door. The Eastern and Southern edge of the wood run along farm land.
Its hard to know where to begin - but to describe the obvious plants in the wood is to start reveal its potential. At this time of the year the light should be reaching the floor of the wood across its full breadth. Where the light does achieve that journey, broadly along its Eastern edge there are small communities of beautiful primroses. Where the primroses have a chance to flourish there are other flowers - notably a huge carpet of bluebells.
Across the rest of the wood (more later) an invasive shadow has grown and loomed - Cherry Laurel, Rhododendron and Bamboo ! The former poisonous to the deer I believe that are helping to browse the Eastern edge of the wood and keep the light flooding in to give the primroses a chance. There are several hundred of these wildflowers. Over the course of a week or so, more and more were coming into bloom.
So my declaration of "war" on the invaders was made along with a solemn vow to restore a carpet of primroses and bluebells throughout the whole space. I have possibly bitten off more than I can chew but it has to be a most worthy endeavor. At the moment the bulk of the wood is a blank desert of shadow caused by invasive trees and plants used for pheasant cover. I will happily trade that for a carpet of indigenous wild flowers. My first ecological target has been set.
I love old books - I'll describe primroses perhaps in another post but for now I'll rely on "Wayside and Woodland Blossoms" by Edward Step - "Series 2" with "127 colored plates". Published by Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd. in 1941.
Step had already died when the series was completed by his daughter who was the illustrator. You can pick up a set for little more than twenty or thirty pounds in a second hand bookshop. I think a lot of these old books get broken up for prints to frame. Our set sits with Jane's gardening books. I am going to use them to list all of our wild flowers over time.
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