we neighbour a stretch of semi ancient oak woodland or temperate rainforest that’s been underplanted with sitka. There’s an old stone dyke boundary that runs between us, across the croft land and over into middle innens. It’s a place of wonder!
For the last 9 years we’ve worked at reclaiming this edge land from rashes, while planting hazel and alder for coppice and allowing nature to take it’s course. It’s a joy to support an abundance of life to return after the dearth of the sitka monocrop. This past year we put up a deer fence, encompassing this edge and it’s like the earth just popped – bluebells moving in, trees relaxing now their out the plastic tubes and just flourishing and so many bugs, beetles and funguses!
In time we’ll keep tending this as an edge zone through coppicing and moving regen oak further up the hill where the native woodland can march across the croft and join in with the woodlands across the burn. In nature, the edge is the transition between forest and open space or fields – a place where two environments meet, and It’s a hotspot for biodiversity! On the croft the open space is a place we call the forest garden where we’re making use of the deeper soils to plant our kitchen garden as well as fruit trees, soft fruit and perennials.
