Every year we have been here, we have planted more trees as part of our goal to rewild large areas of our smallholding. Earlier this year, we created a new wildlife corridor and this winter, our task will be to fill it with (more) trees. This involved a lot of fencing, mainly to stop the sheep from eating all the young trees. They are very partial to anything that’s not grass, our sheep. One small corner was missed out in the big fencing operation. It is nestled between the path the sheep use to come off the hills into the orchard paddocks, the orchard paddock itself and a large area of wildlife corridor. This corner is damp and bramble infested. This week, I fenced it off. In time, we can remove a fence (you can see the tired old posts in the picture above, and it will become integrated with the wildlife corridor. It is now filled it with willow, pine, alder and rowan trees. All of these, except the rowans, were sourced from along our track where numerous trees have self seeded with the seeming intention of blocking a drainage ditch.
The rowans were also self seeded but in a dark corner next to a mature tree, not an ideal spot for them at all, really. Now they have exposure to sunlight as well as plenty of water.
The picture to the right is the small area in question and, if you look closely, you might be able to spot the odd tree. Not easy, some are quite small and, of course, the green leaves blend in nicely with the grass.
We are looking forward to these trees growing swiftly in the coming years and providing a little more cover for local wildlife.
