We wouldn’t be English if we didn’t mention the weather, and it’s certainly becoming a feature on our planting days, last year snow, this year getting a good old buffeting ahead of Storm Eowyn and in the middle of it, which was a bit surreal, hearing about a tornado tearing through Quintrell Downs!
As always though, we very much enjoyed our day with Plant One and cannot convey enough, the brilliant work they do in partnership with landowners and companies.
This year, we were working on Clowance Farm Estate which borders the Clowance Estate. There are 265 acres in total and the owner, Simon, is aiming to re-wild this land. Simon was motivated to do this after a visit to the Knepp Estate in Sussex some years ago. The Knepp Estate (https://knepp.co.uk/) have re-wilded around 3000 acres and Simon explained that “when you see that, you just realise what a green desert we live in”. He aims to re-introduce beavers, create ponds, grassland, more woodland and scrubland and improve and put in more native hedging around his land which would include species such as hawthorn, guelder rose, crab apple, cherry and the Wild Service Tree. A fun fact Carl shared with us about the Wild Service Tree is how, in the past, it was used to make beer and is sometimes called the Chequers tree which is one of the reasons some pubs are named “Chequers”.
Addressing the ever contentious question about land being taken away from agriculture, Carl from Plant One Cornwall went on to tell us “The British government, as part of their environmental emergency plan highlighted the need to plant 30,000 hectares of woodland per year every year starting this year from now until 2050. That will boost our woodland cover from 13% to 19% nationally. They have highlighted that we need to give up to around the 20% mark to meet our biodiversity and carbon capture needs through woodland creation. The European Average for woodland cover is 30%”. Both Carl and Rai were keen to reassure us that there is enough land for agriculture and habitat creation does not necessarily mean that land is taken away, as there is no reason why habitat creation and agriculture cannot go hand in hand, for example, fruit trees can be planted, and although the current ‘normal’ is for fields to be set aside for cows to graze, there is no reason why cows cannot graze in woodland. For more information or if you have any questions, please do visit https://plantonecornwall.com/.
Our mission for the day? We were continuing with planting in a field that is bordered on three sides with woodland, effectively joining the individual habitats together. The existing woodland is predominantly Oak and Ash. The new woodland will closely resemble the old woodland, with the exception of Ash, due to Ash dieback, and will include Oak, Beach, Birch, Hazel and Rowan.
This year, as well as the usual staking and tubing of the trees, we were also getting ‘down and dirty’ (not my words but very eloquently put I think) and also tucking them in with lovely woollen mats in a bid to stop the grass choking the little saplings. Fingers crossed these do their jobs and ‘our’ trees grow healthy and strong. There is a public footpath right through the middle of where we were planting so we can keep a very close eye!
We hope to come back to Clowance Farm Estate and do more work with Simon and wish him the best of luck with his bid to re-wild his land.
Looking forward to whatever Plant One Cornwall (and most likely the weather) have in store for us next time!
