Trees

WE LOVE TREES - I may have mentioned this already!

Of all the things we’ve done here, I consider tree planting to be our greatest achievement. Seeing them grow to maturity has been an unexpected pleasure. Unexpected because most were so small when we put them in the ground we assumed we were planting for future generations and that we would be long gone - in fact, in the ground ourselves - by the time they were fully grown. Happily, we were wrong about this.

Many years ago we were staying with a friend who had a strong influence on our decision to become smallholders. His daughter had given him some trees - 1 year old whips - for his birthday and as he was planting them out and about around his land he said “I should have done this twenty years ago.” From that moment we resolved that, as soon as we found our new home, the first thing we would do was to plant trees.

The Spinney

1994 - The first Spinney plants going in. Ian in the background, Rudge (our cat) in the foreground.

Our land is on a gentle slope and strong SW winds howled across from the bottom corner so our first task was to plant a windbreak to protect the gardens we intended to make further into the land. We decided to plant half an acre of woodland to connect the half-acre we already had to the trees along our northerly boundary - what we call our Side Wood.
We named the new planting “The Spinney” and the first plantings were a mixture of oak, ash, hornbeam, hazel, willow, birch and a few other random plants, some of which we’d grown from seed, the rest bought from English Woodlands, a nursery near Heathfield. For many years this became our go-to nursery for trees and hedging plants. We soon discovered that they held an end of year sale each year around Easter, when they sold off remaining stock at silly prices and each year we came back with sack loads of trees and hedging, for planned and unplanned projects. Leftover plants, such as wild cherry and crab apple, were added to the Spinney.

2004 - Ten years on and many of the trees were taller than me, which in my book makes them officially trees and a major triumph!

Present Day - Now the Spinney is a full blown wood with its own eco-system and a wealth of inhabitants, including a small herd of fallow deer, which was not part of the plan!
We have even been able to coppice a few of the close-planted trees for firewood (always part of the plan).