I would be grateful for advice. We have quite a lot of elder scrub at our wood and we have been advised to reduce this. We also have some areas that are pretty bare now the brambles have been pushed back according to our woodland management plan and advice from the wildlife trusts. We would like to establish some new coppice in this area by planting so that in future we will have a mixed under-storey that can be coppiced once the new trees have grown. Our wood is predominantly oak but does have some ash, willow and crab-apple. There is a bit of hazel.
We would like to plant some new oak in the cleared areas, which we are growing ourselves from our own acorns. We would also like to plant a mixture of hazel, ash and willow (again, we have some of our own whips) to improve diversity and give us a useable crop in years to come.
The question is: what planting density should we use? We have approximately 540 square meters split between two locations that we plan to plant this year. One is a pretty bare area that has been cleared of brambles, the other has dense elder scrub. Would one tree per square meter be appropriate?
Many thanks for your thoughts.
I should emphasise that we will be leaving some elder scrub too - we are going to make changes incrementally and sequentially, and won't completely remove the elder scrub habitat.