Coppicing in Willow Walk
We have recently coppiced one of the older willows in Willow Walk at the Croft Close Set-aside County Wildlife Site. The tree was last coppiced some 20 years ago and had grown considerably since then. Willows are often coppiced or pollarded (which is just coppicing higher up the tree’s stem), typically on a 7 to 10 year cycle.
The tree we have coppiced was creating heavy shadow in summer, suppressing ground flora and indeed was causing smaller adjacent trees to die back. We also coppiced one of these small willows which should encourage its regeneration.
We hope the extra light in the newly created glade will promote new and interesting plants to appear, and in time the two coppiced trees will regrow strongly. Currently deer (we think) are grazing on bark around the Set-aside – in some places causing notable tree damage. We have therefore covered the coppice stumps with brash to discourage such grazing but allowing new shoots to develop.
We will monitor how the coppiced trees respond to inform decisions on future coppicing: no more trees will be coppiced now until the autumn, at the earliest.