During the first two months of the year I spent some time away from the garden indulging my long held interest in woodland management. Although most of the work I’m currently engaged with tends to align more closely with flowers, my first love has always been trees.

When studying at the botanical gardens of Wales some years ago I used to spend the hours before and after class shivering in the hillside Towy valley woods, doing my best to read branches for buds; learning my ash from sycamore in their exposed winter simplicity.

Trees of our more or less native, deciduous woodlands were, and still are, to me the most interesting and intriguing of all the multi-floral habitats; so much so for their repetition in coalition. For any inexperienced horticulturist the wood is a good place to begin learning as reoccurring identification material is so helpfully repeated; you quickly build up a reliable basis of character recognition in order to accurately differentiate between the species.

I have, therefore, a great envy of those who are fortunate enough to be able to give much of their attention to working in woodlands. During those months I spent time both reading up (Edward Thomas, John Collis, Richard Jefferies as well as a re-read of the hailed practical handbook by Cris Starr) and in the woods themselves with a handful of people to whom they are a livelihood or devoted hobby. Within woodland work in general, a particular dimension I was keen to experience more of was coppice management.

Iain Loasby is a coppice worker based in London. For some years now he has been spending his winters relieving borough councils of their public woodland ‘clearance’ responsibilities through managing hazel copses. Where good material, once cut, would usually have been chipped or burned, Iain is putting it to use, converting it into anything from fence poles and pea sticks to charcoal and firewood. Not only does this mean product in place of waste, but also a restoration of the ecologically supportive cycle that used to be carried out in woodlands for centuries.

I met Iain in Furzefield wood up near Potters Bar for a day’s coppicing in January. He showed me the process (in the most basic terms) from cutting to product sorting and cleaning. We were working in a sectioned-off corner of the wood; 1 part of a 7-section rotation Iain had mapped out. Hazel stools are coppiced once every 7 years and therefore once established and carefully managed, a rotation like this will supply a decent haul each year.

(Back in January – using a billhook to cut hazel poles away from the stool and sorting into products)

Now in spring and with vigorously shooting sweet peas and runner beans in the garden needing supporting, I went back to Furzefield to see how Iain had got on with the rest of the area. The timing couldn’t have been better; the bluebells were approaching their peak and everywhere above new leaves were emerging in light yellows and greens. You couldn’t doubt the positive ecological effect that the coppicing process brings to this particular environment. Removing the dense understory of hazel poles lets much needed light down onto the wood floor, allowing the exposed flora to once again proliferate. Rotating this action through the woodland therefore creates a diversity in habitat; moving from one area to the next over a slow succession of winters, new shoots re-growing from old stools. It’s an exciting and invigorating experience to have witnessed both ends of the spectrum on the same site, and to see first-hand how productive, above all else, this old practice still remains. Driving back down to the garden with my bean poles and pea sticks in the back of the truck I felt a great admiration for past generations of coppice workers. Much like farmers of the old wheat field meadows; their back-breaking practices often so entwined within nature as to forget the conservational qualities that result.

Iain’s coppice products are available from his website at: www.rivenwoodcoppice.com

As I came through the gates this morning, gravel and grass still wet from a heavy downpour in the early hours, I was struck by the remarkable change in colour the garden had taken on almost over night. After six seemingly lengthy days in dry, bright heat, a few hours of soaking had been gratefully received right across the board. Deep blue alkanet and tall white cow parsley suddenly appeared thick and heavy along the boundary edges and up through the wood, where they mingled with the celandine yellows and new-nettle green. Along the meadow floor, beneath the now deeper and dulling daffodils, a carpet of pink lamium had grown up, clashing purposefully with the wild Spanish bluebells that bow heads in white, pink and purple.

It was all a sudden reminder, as with the annual returning screech of swifts overhead; that the season has begun, or rather; the winter is gone now, and here begins the rapid run of successional bloom that keeps me busy and engaged long into autumn.

A couple of weeks back, during one of the last days of winter; a first day of sunshine, I took some photographs during the quiet afternoon, reflecting on the long and eventful Winter now ended.

After last year’s let down in the cutting garden I have vowed to give it my all during the coming spring and early summer. The failures, of which were many, I put down to a handful of combined problems. We had a warm spring and dim, wet summer; great for the bulbs, but less than ideal for seed grown annuals. I made mistakes also with the preliminary growing stages; not enough room to harden off young seedlings and therefore taking too long to move them from greenhouse (where they put on fast, tall and leggy growth) to ground. My watering regimes were also too sporadic and often too frequent; leading to rotting tubers and damping off of seedlings.

So, this year I am taking the following measures: 1. Careful and detailed approach to watering – making sure not to water when unnecessary. 2. Moving seedlings quickly on through the new cold frames and out into the beds, starting each day with an hour or so in the greenhouse/propagation area. And most importantly, 3. Getting started early. This means making the most of the warm spring rather than depending on a hot and bright summer.

Therefore, for the first time in my three years with the cutting garden, I am sowing annuals into the spaces between the bulbs before they have even begun flowering. In both years past I have waited to get the bulbs out prior to planting in the annual flowers. The flowers were started in the greenhouse and ready to go in by this point (usually around late May to mid June), but they were limited in number according to how many I had been able to store or pot on. They were also at the mercy of a hot greenhouse. This time I have been moving the plants on quickly through the greenhouse, hardening them off in the cold frames and then getting them into the gaps between the bulbs. It has meant paying more attention to the plants in all stages; watching for the signs and adjusting the temperatures in the growing spaces accordingly, but the results should (hopefully) be worth the effort.

I have also begun direct-sowing some of the seeds. So far these have included: Ammi majus, Papaver somniferum, Calendula ‘Indian Prince’, Californian poppy, Nigella, quaking grass (Briza maxima) and cornflowers. I have planted out a first row of Ammi majus seedlings, as well as Cosmos and white Larkspur. Next will be the Cleome followed by Zinnias and Dahlias.

Collecting seed from the last standing burdock stems along the wood edges. Sealed inside the needle-spurred oval cases there are usually still a few viable seeds this late on in the season; having a go at sowing a few for the first time in the hope of increasing the numbers for next year.

Photo by Roo Lewis – http://www.roolewis.com

Cat’s tails, reed mace, bullrush; something inanely great in knocking a long-hardened winter stem and watching the seeds unravel, disappearing into sunlight.

photographs by Roo Lewis: http://www.roolewis.com