The Art of Natural Forest Practice |
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Nature’s planting thriving in a field in spite of cattle grazing, ponies and rabbits. Bramble and thorn are acting as nature’s plastic tree guard protecting the seedling trees from grazing. Ash and sycamore are becoming trees, bluebells are appearing in the ground cover. A woodland is thriving without any intervention by us! |
Why is nature so successful planting new woodland? Real natural woodland in Britian is flourishing in spite of our best endevous to stop it. And it’s frequently in places we would not consider feasible, urban and rural- heavily grazed meadows, abandoned land, polluted ground, intensive agricuture and even astonishingly regenerating woodland! So successful is this that if nature were given a free hand woodland would soon cover all the land! How is this? Woodland incorportes all the colours of the rainbow, not just a single colour. Our efforts to cereate woodland all too often resemble a quick make-over, at a stroke bare land to plantation forest. No wonder it’s a single colour! Natural woodland takes time; trees are never in straight lines at regular spacing, or lacking in diversity. This shows a real lack of imagination on our part, a failure to observe natural systems. Our efforts are little more than tree farming compared to nature, that will be discernable for a hundred years and more. How come nature frequently out-grows our planting, even though it has to start from seed and ours is rooted in a nursery! The reason, unlike gardening, is that our planting is done with too little understanding. Whether for timber (silvicultural) or conservation (speceis focused), both disregard the complex community that is a natural woodland. We would greatly benfit by observing how nature establishes such diverse, rich and self-sustaining natural woodland.
Nature starts by planting a diversity of pioner species, typically birch (Betula), willow(Salix), ash(Fraxinus), alder(Alnus). Once these become established nature will then do the long term planting, such as oak(Quercus), elm(Ulmus), holly(Ilex). As these grow and begin to spread, the grasses and meadow plants die back and ground flora begins to establish. Amazingly nature has its own eqivalent of plastic tree guards, with such as bramble(Rubus) and thorn (Crataegus) to prevent grazing by cattle, rabbits, ponies, etc and will even adapt to take advantage of changes in mamagement (eg land set-a-side and machinery). As the leaf litter developes, diverse woodland ground plants establish, such as as bluebell(Hyacinthoides) and woodanemone (Anemone). In town amazingly nature will use exotic garden escapees (photo)! As with all good community work, it’s important not tobe in a hurry and give natual processes a chance to take over and lead the way. Guide to creating natural woodland - |
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Observation and experimentation continues. |
A clump of natural ash seedlings that will I suspect favour natural selection favouring the strongest trees. Bramble ground cover acting as rabbit protection from ring barking.
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