Last year I finally read Ben Law’s book “Woodlander” from 2021. I’d read his “Woodand Way” (published 2001) and “Woodsman” (2013), and he is a prominent advocate for traditional woodland management and crafts. “Woodlander” is billed as “a guide to sustainable woodland management”. It’s a very good introduction to the subject and I think works best in mapping out all the pieces of the woodland management and ecosystems jigsaw, and giving people new to woodlands signposts about the more detailed advice they may need in practice. It’s also a pleasure to be taken on a tour of the subject by the man himself. On the strength of it, I got his “Woodland Workshop” and “Woodland Craft” books over Christmas.
It’s very attractively laid out, with a mix of the main text, sidebars, colour photographs and line drawings. Chapters cover woodland ecosystems and surveying, new woodlands, management systems, tools, forest products, and social forestry.
It’s a far more practical than a book like Ken Broad’s “Caring for Small Woodlands” or Chris Starr’s “Woodland Management: a practical guide”. It even shows the difference between even-tooth and raker saw blades for example. But as a new owner or manager of woodland, you’d want to be reading the more textbook-style books too, or at least material published by Forestry Research and organisations like Smallwoods and the RFS.
And of course I always like to see “woodlander” used as a word for people involved in woodlands. The introduction is even preceded by a quote from Thomas Hardy’s “The Woodlanders” about Giles Winterborne making a hazel hurdle from coppice wood.