By Alex Mowat, Trustee.
James Wood, the charity’s demonstration woodland, is more than a plantation of trees to grow fine timber. It is a project that gives back in terms of information and education. Inspired by James Stratton it lives on the kindness of volunteers.
At the end of September 14 kind volunteers from TFT Consultants, came to the site and protected the emerging direct seeded oak saplings from rabbits in Tubex easy wraps.
It is intended that these easy wraps will also give an exact match in conditions to the adjacent nursery grown trees to see how the emerging tree growth compares. Emerging trees were still patchy in their success rates. Some runs of planting had 100 % success and other runs had nothing for several meters at a time. As the acorns were mixed and the soil type is the same the depth of planting could affect the irregularity.
This wonderful group of building surveyors, project managers and property consultants we very chatty at first inspired by the blue sky and panoramic views of the Quantocks and a day away from keyboards. Very quickly a hush fell over the field as the teams got their eye in, finding seedlings in the grass, marking them. This was followed by a chorus of hammers tapping in stakes rhythmically and putting guards on.
A beautiful day in the rolling hills was concluded by a very satisfactory task for everyone. Each volunteer took a bag of acorns, selected from premium trees in Rycote Park in Oxfordshire. The TFT team got on their hands and knees straight away and infilled the blank areas with seed, one by one.
Each volunteer was surprised to find a chocolate biscuit at the top of each row as a well earned reward! We hope the volunteers will come back and see them germinate next year. Thank you to Simon, Caroline and Ellie for collecting the acorns and thank you team TFT for giving up your time and being superheroes for a day!