September 25, 2024
Agri-environment, Commercial and Leisure, Community, Ecological, Ecology, Green Infastructure, Health and Wellbeing, Landscape Architecture, Strategic Advice, Urban Landscapes and Public Realm
Earlier this month we returned to the Great Avon Wood for our second volunteering day of the year with Avon Needs Trees.
Avon Needs Trees is creating areas of new permanent woodland in the Bristol and Bath region. The local charity was set up in response to the climate and nature emergencies. It also seeks to provide natural flood management. The Great Avon Wood is one of the new woodlands being created on a 100 acre site near Pensford, south of Bristol.
We first visited the Great Avon Wood in January, where we spent a day helping with the winter tree planting.
Since visiting last time, a lot more planting has taken place, the woodland area has a new name – Hermitage Wood, and a community tree nursery has been established to raise seedlings for the project.
We started the day with a visit to the area we helped to plant in January to see how the young trees were establishing. An impressive success rate was evident!
We then got stuck in with woodland maintenance activities, to help care for the saplings. Working as a team, we checked each planting station, made sure the trees were in good health and had space to grow. We pulled back grass growing over the mulch mats, removed weeds from the spiral guards, and replaced the occasional mulch mat where needed. A very satisfying process! We also marked any trees that had failed and need replacing in the coming planting season – encouragingly this is only a very low proportion.
It’s great to see the value Avon Needs Trees place on establishment maintenance and aftercare. There is much more to woodland creation than just getting trees in the ground. Properly planned and implemented care, during the following years, is also crucial and can improve sapling survival rates greatly. Our work often involves designing new landscapes and habitats, and site supervision of both large and small scale implementation contracts. Partnering with clients and contractors to ensure new landscapes and habitats are established successfully will benefit from this hands-on experience.
“Planting a tree is just the beginning… the hard part is making sure that it becomes established in the landscape”.
Our day of volunteer work wound up nicely with a visit to a stunning veteran Oak tree, the ‘Publow Oak’, followed by a trip to the local pub. We look forward to visiting again in the future to see the trees grow and become a delightful woodland.
