Knowlands Wood
What makes a wood into a wildlife haven? Three main factors: light. variety of species and variety of age.
Annual coppicing is critical. This is what keeps the wood alive and well, a rich resource for wild flora and wildlife. Light gets to the woodland floor, allowing ground plants to thrive. Flowers throughout the year provide nectar and pollen for butterflies, moths, hoverflies, bees and many more. After two or three years, the regrowth for a time provides dense habitat for nesting birds, especially the summer visitors.
We practice coppicing with standards (leaving certain trees to mature) and we work on a cycle of about 35/40 years, which means there is always a rich age range across the woodland.
This year the coppicing is at the western edge of the wood, near the old railway line, mostly hornbeam and ash with some oak and aspen. In other parts of the wood there is birch, hazel, field maple and so on. At the end of January, the sap is already beginning to rise in the hornbeam – it will soon be time to stop work for another year. The product is left in the wood until summer time so that the forest floor suffers minimum damage when removing it for further processing.
