Woodland Conservation

30th May 2025

Castle Wood Meadow

A beautiful day, 21 friendly volunteers, and another 63 hours of volunteering on and around Castle Wood Meadow. 

This session our hardworking regular team were joined by some new volunteers and some volunteers who hadn't attended for a little while. This made for some great chats while we worked and the time passed very quickly. 

A welcome break gives volunteers a chance to both relax and get to know each other.

Activities to restore the meadow, which had not been mowed for some time, were carried out in three smaller teams, working in different areas, but mainly doing the same activities. The main activity involved the continued removal of the saplings that were taking a hold in the meadow, casting shade and preventing wildflowers from growing. Many of these saplings are the competitive Turkey Oak and, according to the Woodland Trust:

"The Turkey Oak was introduced in the 1700s and is now impacting our native oak populations. It's less valuable to wildlife, but much faster growing and a host of the knopper oak gall wasp."

Team work was involved, some cutting the saplings, others taking them away in barrows, others using the waste within a dead hedge.

A second activity involved keeping the shrubs beneath the large open-grown trees to a maximum height of around one metre. An area at the top of the meadow will remain a little wilder for a few years, with shrubs and brambles beneath the trees left in place but, once again, they will be managed to keep their heights to about one metre. This wilder area provides habitat, and habitat corridors, for many woodland animals and, additionally, the brambles and shrubs will provide pollen for butterflies and other invertebrates.

Another couple of volunteers took advantage of the shade provided on the edge of the meadow to continue the work started a little while back on reclaiming the paths for walkers, and preventing further erosion of the meadow itself. It is lovely to see that after our previous work on the pathways the meadow edges are greening up once again. The volunteers, at the same time, began the process of creating tiered verges which are required for a whole range of invertebrates. This involved removing ivy and brambles at the front of the verges for a metre or so to help different grasses and other plants to grow, providing food sources for butterflies.

The meadow is looking beautiful again and, look closely in the long grass and you will spot quite a number of native wildflowers. Hopefully, the mowing schedule will take place in the autumn (helping spread the wildflower seeds throughout the meadow) and we will have an increased show of flowers this time next year.