In Spring 2025, Ed was interviewed by Forest Research about our Woodland Creation Project on the land at Chesterblade Hills.
You can watch the interview here, and a transcript is available below.
Transcript
I’m a seventh-generation farmer here. We’ve de-livestocked here now, and we are focused on environmental land management. So on the land we’re doing lots of environmental land work, creating ponds, planting new hedges, wildflower meadows and woodland creation.
As part of the wider farm strategy we have here, we’ve got three overriding objectives.
One is how can we hold as much carbon and water in the landscape?
The second is how can we create as much great wildlife habitats?
And the third is how can we reconnect people with the natural world and with themselves at the same time?
So we chose natural colonisation ’cause we wanted to do something that was a bit more naturalistic than the grid lines of plastic tree guards in squares or looks very uniform. Doesn’t look like a woodland, really, isn’t how woodlands would’ve formed historically.
So we planted clumps in a kind of mosaic of native broadleaf trees to try and make it as naturalistic as possible.
So we’ve done a very low-density planting using biodegradable tree guards, but the low-density planting just helps seed the area to help it give it a leg up. And amongst that we’ll start to see natural regeneration, especially scrub. I think that will blend in really well and look a lot nicer, a lot quicker.
I think it’s actually more economic as well in a way, ’cause if you think how much capital you have to put up to plant a lot more trees and grid lines and yet having to be more patient, and maybe that’s a good thing for human beings.
There is an argument that once you have a closed canopy woodland, there’s less biodiversity ’cause it cuts out the sunlight.
And so it makes it less diverse, less species on the ground, particularly. So, can we be patient and allow that to happen? I would argue it’s maybe a good thing to do that
The dark green areas with the trees in, as you can see dotted around and all over here. That is the 200 acres of the woodland creation, natural regeneration. So you can see it’s part of a wider farm mosaic overall; it’s 730 acres.
You can see all the ponds we’ve put in and where the streams are, the dark bits are existing bits of copse around the place. And the idea was that the new woodland would help connect up to create a bit more of a corridor, the existing woodland and copse with the new creation.
So you can see all the dark bits and hopefully that will all become like a big horseshoe of amazing mosaic woodland habitat.
The expectations are that the the most scrub and the most natural regeneration is starting from the hedges and moving inwards to the middle of the field.
So seeing suckering plants like Hawthorne and Blackthorn moving. And so that’s happening in some places more than others to do to with to do with the direction it’s facing and the topography and what species are already in the hedgerows.
A thing that has also surprised us is the absolute huge amount of small mammals. You see now. It’s mostly grassland, which we’ve planted into. And whenever you walk out through the grassland, there’s literally millions of tunnels for small mammals.
And that in its turn, brings lots of birds of prey.
And the tall tussocky grasses brings lots of seed heads. So you have a lot more invertebrates, insects, small birds, feeding. So it’s a massive source of winter food now and you’re seeing more bats as well.
So a huge amount more wildlife. And we’ve started putting down bits of tin to see what snakes we have and things like that.
The risks are probably risks that you get in a lot of other woodland creation projects that are more traditional, maybe.
So deer browsing, we don’t currently have masses of deer here, but we’re going to attract more and more, and we are already seeing that just over a year into this project, there’s a lot more deer. They come right up close to my office here now.
But I think the deer numbers will grow with the slow growth of the woodland, and I think the two can be compatible together.
So over the last year, I’ve been going out fortnightly and repairing lots of wind damage. I’m covering every inch of the project area, which is 200 acres, fortnightly, which is quite a task, but actually it’s really nice being out there; otherwise you wouldn’t get to be amongst it quite so much. So I actually quite enjoy that. Some of the plants won’t grow so because we’re planting a lot fewer, that’s a risk.
I thought when we create the woodland, no one’s gonna be against that. But sure enough, some people are, change is challenging for any human being, fear of change and the unknown. But once change arrives, it’s often not as scary as you think it’s gonna be.
I’d rather make the change and face a bit of criticism than not do stuff to make the world a better place.
But in the wider local community and across the UK, we’ve had great connections with all sorts of people who are very supportive of what we do.
So I think there’s a lot of people who’ve been in the industry who’ve been in woodland management who, my feeling, is aren’t that keen on natural regeneration.
So there’s probably an education process amongst people working in woodlands. There’s probably an education process due to farmers and land managers as well.
My feeling would be that most people don’t know it’s an option. So it’s quite a new concept, even though it’s an age-old concept. That’s how Woodland was created naturally. We didn’t use to plant woodland like we do now. So it needs to be on the websites. There needs to be leaflets out, there need to be in farmer meetings, you need to be in meetings with woodland workers and owners and custodians.
Some farmers are quite active on social media. I use information gathering a lot from newsletters emailed to me, websites, from going to in-person events and meetings. I think a lot of people look at YouTube channel stuff now as well. But yeah, some farmers, ’cause you know, they’re isolated, they use their phone a lot, whereas I actively try not to look at my phone.
When I’m retiring and getting old, I won’t quite see all the trees in their full glory. But if I could see them all well on their way, that would give me real pleasure, and that would feel like success, that what we’ve planted for generations to come is well on its way.
And you can see lots of natural regeneration happening, and the saplings we planted are doing well, and it’s biodiverse, and it’s thriving and it fits in with the, the character of the landscape.
For me that would be success.
