Hello from Cheshire

[Meadowcopse]

Hello,

I have a small meadow (2 acres / 0.8 ha) approximately triangular, that was cut off from a larger field by a bypass in the mid 80s between Cheshire and North-Wales.

Although not wooded (yet...) and a habitat type of conservation value, I'm considering planting up to 1 acre / 0.4 ha as a future coppice area from the narrowest side and still leave a significant open meadow area. (This is soon to have a few specimen young black poplars of local provenance planted).

There are a quite a few ash trees (both mature long established and young trees), in the hawthorn hedgerows - together with maple, oak, willow, dog-rose and alder.

The land occasionally floods from the River Dee in winter, but the existing trees seem happy enough as the ground drains away without being waterlogged the rest of the year (and the black poplars will no doubt be happy too in the meadow area).

My other interests include landscape history, historic and local variety fruit trees - as well as involvement with larger woodland and landscape conservation projects of others.

Regards,

Daniel

[tracy]

Hi Daniel

Lovely to meet you and we look forward to hearing more from you soon. Have you done any woodland archaeology? There is a group in the SE who are very active. Not sure who is up your way though

Tracy

http://sewaf.org.uk/

[tracy]

Ooh, also saw a HUGE fat adder yesterday. Biggest one we have ever seen. Course, he moved under some brash so that we couldn't get a photo

[Meadowcopse]

Hi Tracy - I went on one of the Greenwood Trust's landscape history walks around Ironbridge a few years ago and that was very good and very informative.

A wood I do some work in on the Shropshire / North Wales Border above Offa's Dyke was formerly monastic land and an archaeologist friend suggests Ellis Peters was influenced by the landscape there for one of the Cadfael books.

From my own plot, if it wasn't for the by-pass blocking the view - I'd be able to see the remains of a small castle dating from the 1200s and half a mile up sloping fields there is a site of a Roman Villa.

Not aware of any adders up here, but I saw a black one at The Forestry Commission's conservation centre on the edge of The New Forest last time I was down south and stopping at Salisbury.