New member (Midlands), looking for the "right" kind of woodland...

[RobK]

Hi,

I have recently joined this forum after reading some of the postings on it. Many of the members seem to have an impressive, in-depth knowledge of many subjects that I need to research and ask questions about. Hopefully, the membership here can fill in a load of blanks in my understanding of woodland ownership and management.

I have always loved woodland, but never had the sort of familiarity with it that you would expect from someone who lives or works with it every day. For a variety of reasons, I want to own a piece of woodland, and I have started looking around many of the websites devoted to woodland sales, management and lifestyle. From what I have seen so far, there is a wide variety of woodland types, sizes and locations available for sale at a very wide spread of prices. I have seen some woodland for sale at under £1500 per acre in areas like Wales or Scotland, and some going for £10k-£15K per acre! So, the next questions I asked myself were, "What sort of woodland am I looking for?", "What do I want to do with it?". "What are my objectives and interests in woodland?". I have some of these answers, but to fill in a few blanks, it may help if readers of this thread knew a little more about me.

I am an engineer, born and raised in Derby, and have been involved in the off-shore oil and gas inustry for 20 years. Having travelled over much of the world, mainly to areas relating to petroleum activities, I have experienced a variety of places, people, cultures and mentalities that are not "everyday experiences" in the UK. Some of the contrasts to the lifestyle of people in the UK are very thought-provoking. This led to my interests developing in subjects such as renewable energy, climate change, excessive consumerism and wasteful consumption, pollution and the general "trash-the-earth" philosophy of globalised commercialism.

Subsequently, when I started considering such subjects as the whole "peal oil" situation, the inevitable oil crisis that will devolop sooner, rather than later, and the consequences to about 5 billion people when petroleum-based food production industry pushes food costs through the roof, and we can only produce enough food by non-intensive (i.e. non petroleum-based) agriculture to feed two billion on the earth...

That is another forum in itself. I am off on a tangent here. We were talking about woodland, right?...

...well, I was, anyway...

So, what sort of qualities am I looking for? These are some of the features of woodland that appeal to me:-

Preservation and conservation of traditional "British woodland", favouring the indiginous tree, plant and animal species.

Woodland management to promote a sustainable, renewable ecosystem, with broad-based bio-diversity.

Woodland density that provides a good cover of tree canopy without blocking out the sky altogether.

Sufficient light at ground level to enjoy the woodland vista, and not create a dark, dingy, overcast feel to it.

Tree canopy height being high enough to allow you to ”walk” through the woods, rather than duck-and-crawl through it.

Ground vegetation suitable for enjoying a "walk in the woods", rather than a "Sleeping Beauty" style impenetreable thicket that you have to hack down or climb over. This would be the sort of place that deer would graze and inhabit.

The possibilty for thinning the trees to yield some saleable timber, so the revenue could make the woodland self-sustaining financially. I would not be looking for "profiteering" from a wood, but I would also not want it to be a hole in the ground that swallowed my bank account...

Suitability for obtaining grants for assisting in woodland management would be a bonus...

I have also been reading on other woodland websites, (such as the Offwell Woodland site), that different (dominant) species of tree support very different numbers of species of invertebrates, and subsequently, other species further up the food-chain. For example, in the web link below:-

http://www.offwell.free-online.co.uk/woodland_manage/broadleaf.htm

... it states that oak-based woodland supports a huge number of invertebrate species, and consequently a lot of other wildlife that feed on them. Contrast this with the comments made (elsewhere) about chestnut trees, which are an "introduced" foreign species of tree, and support far fewer invertebrate species. Does this mean that any woodland dominated by chestnut trees (horse, or sweet) would be noticably less well inhabited by woodland wildlife? I found these facts surprising. I remember all of the conker trees being huge when I was a kid in the 70's !!

This is the sort of knowledge base that I need to expand on before I can make a decision as to what sort of woodland I want to buy. If anyone has any opinions, experience or links to useful websites that can fill in some of these blanks for me, all comments would be welcomed...

Many thanks,

Rob

[tracy]

Hi Rob

Good to hear from you - I assume you are a member of PowerSwitch or some other Peak oil forum? lol.

This is pretty much exactly why we bought our woodland. Energy supply and our own piece of earth to care for. It is a good reason and many more people are doing it.

Whereabouts in the country are you based? You are welcome to visit us if you want to - or other woodland owners if you are not near Sussex.

Woodland type?

Hmm, ok, big questions! For what you are looking for you would want access to extract your timber. So think about access tracks, nearness to the roads. How close do you want to be to other people? Dog walkers.... helpful eyes and ears or nosy neighbours?

Will you be doing the work yourself? If so, a coppice woodland might be best - and it is renewable cos when you cut it, it grows back!

Take a look at www.coppice.co.uk for biodiversity issues.

Yes, woodland which are just one species have a more limited variety of creatures - but you could change that by felling some trees and letting some light in.

If you want woodfuel then you would want trees that grow fast - not just oak! Oak standards are great to have and so important to the woodland, but it is mostly the understory you would use.

I would suggest that you go and look at lots of different woodlands. Even ones you are not really interested in and you will learn a lot about what you do and don't want with each visit.

No woodland will be 'perfect' but there are things you can change and things you can't. It is good to know the difference!

We have a chestnut coppice and it has a marvellous array of wildlife and there is a lot we can do and are doing to make it even better.

see : http://peplers.blogspot.com/

There are lots of grants available to help - but with the current economics who knows how long that will last!

Hope this is a helpful start. I am sure many others will post up their thoughts too!

tracy

[Rich]

Hi Rob,

Ditto what Tracy suggests, also if you were thinking long term at what kind of trees you wanted to leave as a legacy, Ben Law suggests in this months Permaculture magazine, some species, mainly for roundwood building, post peak oil, that 'might' also be suited to a warmer climate in the next 30 to 60 years.

http://www.permaculture.co.uk/main2.html

[Stephen1]

Hi Rob

Rob wrote;

"... it states that oak-based woodland supports a huge number of invertebrate species, and consequently a lot of other wildlife that feed on them. Contrast this with the comments made (elsewhere) about chestnut trees, which are an "introduced" foreign species of tree, and support far fewer invertebrate species. Does this mean that any woodland dominated by chestnut trees (horse, or sweet) would be noticably less well inhabited by woodland wildlife? I found these facts surprising"

It's a common misunderstanding when looking at tables listing the insects and numbers of insects each tree species supports to think this is the whole story. Often the tables you see are looking at 'specialist species', i.e. that only use that species of tree. Sweet chestnut often comes off very badly in these tables - in this country there are very few species that 'need' only sweet chestnut, but there are lots of invertebrates (not to mention fungi) that Can an Do use sweet chestnut - these more generalist species are of value both in themselves and for forming 'food' for other larger predatory invertebrates and so on up the chain to birds and other vertebrates.

The figures quoted for oak are usually the most misleading! Many of the specialist oak invertebrates are species that need very old oak with very large old trunks full of rotting heartwood. These species variously need heartwood exhibiting various types and stages of decay - but most importantly they often need this rotten wood to be deep inside a very large diameter trunk - which provides insulation against changes in temperature / humidity etc. These species just can't use young oak, oak coppice or woodlands full of oaks cut down for timber age 120-140 before they develop a column of heartrot (if they did have heartrot their timber would be useless!)

Many species that were thought to be specialist oak species it turns out just need large diameter tanin rich rotten wood rather than specifically oak trees.

Most oak trees in woods are felled long before they develop the deep rotten heartwood that the invertebrates on the lists and counts of 'species found on oak' require - these are usually only found on ancient parkland oaks and pollards. Most sweet chestnut stems are usually relatively young before they are felled (coppiced most commonly in the past, and fears of 'shake' leading to early felling of timber trees).

Sweet chestnut has huge potential for biodiversity depending on how you manage it. It produces tanin rich slow rotting heartwood very similar to oak but has the advantage of growing much more quickly than our native oaks to large diameter size. It can often be used to 'plug' the gap between old veteran trees and young braodleaves.

Be wary of these tables of insect numbers and tree species, they are usually refered to out of context, and without any real information about what they are referring to. In a mixed broadleaved woodland the style of management is at least as important in terms of biodiversity as the proportions of the species of trees.

Of course it's different story if your looking at £1500 an acre sitka spruce plantations in the uplands - but these too have loads of potential depending on your choice of management.

If I was playing this game again I'd spend even more time on the question of Why do I want to buy some woodland rather than what sort of woodland. Woodland that is already beautiful, high in biodiversity etc. Don't kid yourself that you're saving these woodlands by buying them - these woods are very safe these days - they weren't twenty years ago, but the overwhelming majority of these woods are safe now. If you want to make an environmental contribution/redress it's the derelict, scrub woodlands and coniferous plantations that have the greatest potential for transformation by sensitive management over a couple of decades into biodiverse oases.

[Darren]

Depends on the woodland. You're best going with what you got. Mine's plantation over ancient woodland. Plenty of local trees growing amongst them so I favour the local trees over non-native. The Spruce I fell goes for firewood and the native trees I coppice to make rustic furniture and charcoal.

[RobK]

Hi, again,

Many thanks for all fof your replies to my query. There was a lot of usefulo detail in there, and it is much appreciated.

I have been browsing further sites, and one theme that recurred was that of public access. One site that I remember in particular, woodlands.co.uk, mentioned that the costs of ownership, management and admin would be a lot higher for woodland that has been decreed as "open access land". Is this a reference to the "2000 CROW Act" that I keep seeing listed on woodland sales particulars? What are the consequences of this in practical and economic terms?

Is there any consensus of opinion amongst mebers of this website (that are woodland owners) about the "public access issue"? Is your land decreed as "public acces" land, or is it private? How much woodland for sale falls into which of the two camps, and how does it affect the sale price? Does the "public access" type tend to be of any particualr woodland type (size/location/proximity to towns/tree types, etc...)

What hoops do you have to jump through to get truly private woodland? How are the legal rights divided between the woodland owner and the public? What should I be looking for in sales particulars?

On the subject of sales particulars, there seems to be a lot more woodland for sale in areas away from Derbyshire (where I live...) than there is in or around Derbyshire. There seems to be a lot of larger, cheaper woods for sale if you go way up north, or west. Maybe the Midlands is just too industrialised?...Did they build too many Roll-Royce and Toyota factories on the Derbyshire woodlands?

...guess I might have to leave the Midlands to own some woodland...

One more question, whilst I am at the keyboard; What sort of size of woodland are most members owning and managing? What makes a "small" woodland "small"? How big does it have to get before it becomes too much to manage personally, and contractors have to be used, and it starts to become a commercial venture, rather than a private one?

Is the workload affected by tree types? e.g. Conifers grow faster than broadleaves, so reach the felling stage sooner, but have thicker canopies that may reduce understorey growth-rates. Which increases the worklaod?; faster growing, thinning and felling, or faster understorey/ground growth?

Any ball-park figures would help me in assessing prospective woodlands.

Many thanks again.

Regards,

Rob

[Kris Hemin]

Hi,

Here's some random thoughts on the above:

Sweet chestnut coppice in Kent produces around 15 tonnes per hectare per annum in regrowth (FC figures).

Probably too many sheep grazing Derbyshire hills for much spare woodland (curse those woolly maggots!).

Recently a friend of mine bought 8 hectares of 60 year old Sitka spruce and used some of the harvest proceeds to replant 98% with native deciduous species. Fifteen years ago I planted up 4 acres ex sheep desert as native deciduous for coppice. It's got there now but quite a long, though very active, "wait".

Conclusion - buy existing mixed woodland and manage it to provide timber now and in coming years whilst developing the mixed age species mix you can best work with. If you can, look to expand the area and enjoy being part of the long term reafforestation of Britain that we so greatly need and seems to be underway. Develop mixed use eg forest gardens, coppice products, charcoal. Public access is a difficult topic. You could plant species as per "Sleeping Beauty" if you want to sleep peacefully but people generally only visit woodlands where invited, don't they. Like in, dare I say it, Red Riding Hood people think it wise not to leave the path!

Hope that was useful. 2nd hand experience is useful but never as good as doing it. Your motives seem great so good luck and hope you get stuck in soon!

Kris

[Binz]

Re the size of wood, we have 6 acres of coppice with standards as part of a larger wood and that is about right for what we want at the moment. It gives us enough space to manage different areas in different ways to increase diversity, but is small enough that we can manage the work. How much suits you will depend on several things such as the type of woodland and whether you will be doing all the work yourself, and of course what work you want to do. For us we decided anything over 4 acres would be enough and then the location, type and atmosphere of the wood were more important than having a larger area. We ended up buying too far from where we live now (1 hour 20 mins drive each way, but only a few minutes from where I grew up) with the plan of moving back close when we retire. It would be good to have a larger area when we have more free time to be there and work with it / enjoy it, but for now what we have is just right for us. Having said all that, different people buy woods for different reasons and there's no substitute for visiting some woods and seeing what you like about them and what you don't.

[woodbodger]

Hi Rob We bought a lovely house in Wales (Carmarthen) with 42 acres of wood which is a lot of wood for one person but you can choose what you do with different areas, some areas the forestry advisor said leave for fifteen years to develop and then we will worry about it, other areas we have opened up as clearings for owls and birds other bits are going to be thinned to allow the better trees to develop and of course we have lots of space to walk around in. Come the hike in petrol prices we have a secure source of fuel easily enough for us and I can feel really complacent! My one thought is that you should live as close to your wood as possible. We have just started the grant scheme, better woodlands for Wales which will run over 5 years and help fund me to put in pathways, bird boxes and thin trees.

[RobK]

Hi, All,

That's an interesting point you have there, Woodbodger... buy a house that is close to your woods...

In theory, I could buy the woodland first, then buy a house close to it. That may be a lot easier to achieve, as good woodland is not as easy to buy as a good house. There are houses for sale everywhere... I was looking to move house soon, anyway, and as I have no wife and kids to worry about, and I work at sea, so I am away for a five week trip, followed by five weeks on leave, so I could live almost anywhere. Most of my ship's crew are Russian, Norwegian and Philippino. There are only four Brits onboard...

So, thinking laterally; where are there a lot of nice woodlands for sale? Where is a good place to live? I could move sixty miles in almost any direction, and still preserve my social life and family contacts. Where should I look? Shropshire is not so far away, sparsely populated and has large areas of outstanding natural beauty. Similarly, Herefordshire, Warwickshire, Liecestershire, Notts. South Yorks. and Lincolnshire.

So, here's a question for anyone with familirity with woodlands around England:-

Suppose you could up-root at will, stick a pin in a map, and say "I am buying a wood in this area...", which of the England counties between Shropshire-to-Lincolnshire, and Nothants.-to-Yorshire would you choose to own woodland in, and why?

As for the "reasons why" part of the answer, I am particularly interested in the reasons relating to the land itself, not the fact that it may be really close to where your cousins live, and you could see them more often, etc...!!

As, and when, oil and food starts getting really expensive, I would be wanting some land suitable for growing crops on as well as woodland, so good soil fertility, natural irrigation and drainage would also be important. I would also like to avoid high population densities, but still remain within commuting distances of at least one good sized town.

Unfortunately, because I have spent many years working outside the UK, I have only got to familiar with the areas where I have studied and worked, between Leeds, Derby and Hampshire. Once I get away from the M1, M40, M42 and M25 commuter routes, I am into unknown territory...

So, any "favourite areas" on your wish lists?

Cheers,

Rob