Well it has been around two months now since we had our
first tree planting day in Newbridge Park and everything is looking
good for our latest additions. Despite
the best efforts of the un-seasonally cold weather, which has put everything
back by weeks, the new trees are starting to burst into leaf and even the slow
starters – like beech and oak – are showing signs of life. Back on the 17th March about 30
volunteers turned up, including families and children, to help plant over one
hundred trees. Funded as part of grant
kindly provided by the Kirkby Foundation, we were able to plant a range of
native tree species: oak, beech, hornbeam, small-leaved lime, alder, silver
birch, wild cherry, holly and yew. Alongside
the tree planting, we also ran a sponsor-a-tree scheme, giving local
people a chance to have a small but very real stake in the wood and hopefully a
legacy for many years to come. Of the 50
trees available for sponsorship, there are still some available and if you
would like to sponsor one, then please contact us (info@newbridgepark.org). It only costs £10, you get a sponsorship
certificate and each tree is numbered, so you can enjoy going down to the woods
to find your very own tree and watch it grow over the coming years.
And this is just the start of our Newbridge Park woodland
management plan. Over future
years, we plan to do a lot more conservation work in the wood, with the aim of
improving it for local people and wildlife alike. You won’t see huge changes over night; it’s
going to be a gradual and carefully planned process. We want to improve the wood but not in a way
that massively alters the character and overall appeal of woods. A key part of our long-term plan is to
improve the mix of trees in the wood, which at the moment is dominated by
sycamore and ash. By getting a better
blend of species you achieve two things: encourage a broader range of wildlife
(increasing the wood’s biodiversity) and make the whole wood
more
resilient to things like climate change or pests and diseases. For example, look at ash die-back, a new
disease that arrived in the UK in 2012, which can infect and kill ash trees. If this disease reaches Pickering, it could
have a really big impact on Newbridge woods, where around a third (if not more)
of all the trees growing there are ash. Another
thing we want to do is open up the tree canopy a bit more, to let in more light
(‘skylighting’). At the moment large parts of the wood are so
dark that very few plants can survive on the ground. And while there is nothing wrong with ivy and
dog’s mercury, by letting in more light you can encourage a lot more plant
species to thrive on the woodland floor, including woodland flowers like
primrose, wood anemone or foxgloves. You
can also encourage shrubs and smaller trees including hazel, hawthorn, bramble
and crab apple; great for woodland birds, as places to nest and sources of food.
So what else have we go planned this year? Well the intention is to plant more trees this
coming autumn/winter. This will include
some as part of our School’s Plant-a-Tree scheme, where we have supplied trees
(again a mix of native species) to a couple of local schools, where the
children are going to grown them on and then come down to the woods and plant
them. Hopefully this will be a great way
to get the kids engaged with nature and their local wood. Watch this space for more news on that.