“A wood of our own” by Julian Evans

I read “A wood of our own” by Julian Evans before I bought Century Wood, way back in 2007. I was already pretty sure I wanted to own a woodland, and Evans’ book helped confirm it. It’s become the book I compare other woodland owners’ books against, and I’ve looked through it again after reading and reviewing “A wood of one’s own” by Ruth Pavey.

Back in 2007 I had already read Evans’ book “Badgers, beeches, and blisters”, which is out of print but still available as a free PDF from woodlands.co.uk. That is very much a How To book with a lot of practical advice. At the same time as “A wood of our own”, I bought Chris Starr’s “Woodland management: a practical guide” and Ken Broad’s “Caring for small woods”. Both of these are more formal (very formal in Starr’s case: it’s a textbook) How To books in the vein of “Badgers, beeches, and blisters”, whereas “A wood of our own” is autobiographical. A first person account of Evans and his wife and her brother purchasing and managing the wood.

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“A wood of one’s own” by Ruth Pavey

“A wood of one’s own” by Ruth Pavey has been out for a couple of years but I’ve only got round to reading it this month. For me, it was a bit of curate’s egg. It’s well written (there are gushing reviews in the press) but the content was rather disappointing: the gardening correspondent of the local paper in Highgate and Hampstead buys a 4 acre wood in Somerset, and uses it for gardening. Maybe that is too harsh. It’s really an orchard after all, and Pavey has a lot of awareness of what is going to set people’s teeth on edge: planting garden flowers in woodland, for instance.

Pavey has family and childhood connections to Somerset, and so it was not entirely surprising that in 1999 she ended up buying her four acres there. Mixed scrub, orchard, some big trees, and lots of brambles and nettles.

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Cutting brambles with a hedge trimmer

I’ve written before about mowing rides and glades with a scythe mower and a brush cutter before that. Six foot high nettles, cow parsley and saplings present no obstacle to this machine, but brambles are another story. Their branches run horizontally, tangle together and root when they touch the ground, creating a strong mesh. They need both horizontal and vertical cuts to cut them up and separate them from their roots. Last year I bought a petrol hedgetrimmer and yesterday I used it on big thicket of  brambles blocking a ride: its first proper outing.

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