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Following an epic weekend of tree planting a completely new future woodland has been created in St Ives. All on land that we lease from Cornwall Council as part of the St Ives Community Orchard & Nature Reserve group.
Named Koos Govenek, Cornish for Hope Wood, and planted full of oaks, alders, elders, hazel, hawthorn, holly, rowan, birch, broom and dogwood rose, all trees and shrubs native to Cornwall. 450 of these trees plus stakes and tree guards were donated by Eforest and 50 larger trees were bought with funding from the project.
The planting was a true community effort with a constant stream of people arriving, digging, planting and chatting. It was mainly local people, but as it was advertised by the Woodland Trust to be part of their ‘Big Climate Fightback day’, volunteers came from all over Cornwall.
A successful Crowdfunder that had offered tree sponsorship with tree planting certificates and tree labels also helped spread the news. The crowdfunder raised an incredible £1410 plus another aprox £300 from people adopting trees at the Guildhall, Nancledra school fair and at the tree planting event. All funds will go back into the project, more trees, wildflowers and tools and the Community orchard group plan to source a lovely wooden bench to go up on the hillside to enjoy the beautiful view over the new woodland.
Base camp at the orchard we put up a tent off our shed where we had a fire going and tea / coffee all day for those who needed a warm up. One of our volunteers stayed there to meet and greet people arriving, send them in the right direction and hand out the labels / certificates to those who had sponsored trees.
Showing the way
The welcoming committee
Directions to new woodland
Over the last 5 weeks we have been clearing the land in preparation for the tree planting and we also created a new shortcut path from the orchard to the space to make it easier to reach. This new path takes you through a magical ,fern, ivy & lichen-covered woodland which is quite special. A year ago the new woodland space wasn’t reachable in any way unless you were happy to walk through thick waist-high brambles and now it’s a regularly trod path.
We hope that many of the tree planters will come back to volunteer with us to visit and care for the trees planted next year. In the summer the bracken and brambles will threaten to cover over these new trees so volunteers will be needed to help clear around the trees regularly. Work parties are every Sunday from 11am (often
on Tuesdays too from 2pm) mostly working in the orchard on various projects but also up on the hillside.
The best time to visit the woodland will be in the spring to enjoy the spring flowers which should be abundant. When holes were dug for the trees, so many bulbs (probably bluebells or wood anenomes) were seen in the earth. This can apparently be an indication of ancient woodland and bracken and brambles can be thanked for having protected these precious wildflowers all these years as it acts as a surrogate woodland for them. In most areas the thick bracken mulch has been too thick to allow these wildflowers to show through so now this has been cleared we look forward to seeing them all come up. People should try avoid trampling on these wildflowers in the spring and pathways have been marked out through the woodland to help with this. There are still large areas in the reserve that are covered with impenetrable shrub and brambles so the wildlife will still have benefit of this habitat as well as benefits of the new woodland area.
The vision for this new woodland is to enhance biodiversity, improve the local eco-system and to tackle climate change by growing more trees. Plan is to continue to plant trees along the lower regions of the hillside and to treasure the existing heathland and scrub. Participants commented that it felt good to have the opportunity to do
something positive to help reduce carbon, what a wonderful project it was for future generations and how lucky they felt to have this protected oasis alongside the housing estate in St Ives.
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