Leader Jeff
Another visit to this beautiful National
Trust site in the north of the county. We worked at the southern
- woodland end of the site. The site is slowly but surely being
taken over by laurel!!
When you usually think of laurel you think of a small bush found
in a garden - think again-this is laurel which was brought back
to the estate in victorian times and has run amuck and is now
up to sixty feet tall. The usual pests such as deer and squirrel
which eat off the young oak and beech saplings don’t touch
this stuff - it contains arsenic or some such poison. So slowly
but surely the laurel is taking over.
Six people turned up for this task including a friend of Lornas
from the Philippines. It turned out to be a beautiful June day
despite the weather forecast which was for heavy showers and thunderstorms.
This was very much an individual task where people just did their
own thing and got on with cutting down these monsters. The cut
laurel was then stacked up in a big pile for the warden Martin
to take away and dispose of. We couldn’t burn them because
of the arsenic!!
By the end of the day we had cleared a huge area and it turned
out to be strangely satisfying work which is a good thing considering
we have to do the same thing again for many a year!!