A year at Monkwood

Thursday 12 December 2024

Monkwood musings

Join Julie, the project engagement officer, and Dominique, the reserve manager, on a journey through time as we restore lost habitat on land at Green Farm, next to our beloved Monkwood nature reserve.

Newly planted saplings at Gravel Orchard, Green Farm. Photo by Dominique Cragg

As the year draws to a close, Dom reflects on the past year at Monkwood and Green Farm...

As the year draws to a close, the frantic pace slows slightly and allows us to take stock of all that’s happened at Monkwood over the last 12 months. The Green Farm restoration project that’s now been underway for 18 months has kept me very busy but there have also been exciting things happening within Monkwood too. Here are a couple of my highlights…

I’ve really enjoyed learning more about the history of Monkwood and its surrounds. Something that’s really captured me are the Anglo-Saxon charters for the area that date back to 757 AD. They mostly describe land boundaries and rights to certain things like grazing and land ownership, which don’t sound the most interesting topics but it’s the way that the boundaries are described using topographical features in the landscape that I like.

Here are a few snippets that describe the land boundaries around Monkwood (translated by the historians at Wichenford Local Heritage Group and by archaeologists at Worcestershire County Council):

‘From Cat’s Way to Greenway, along the Greenway to The 3 Oaks’

‘From the scarred Oak by way of the Woad Land, from the Woad Land to Gearri Ford’

‘Along the brook to the boundary hedge, over Field Bourne to the timber ridge’

‘From the Ship Oak to the great aspen, from the great aspen to reed slough’

I’ve spent far too much time poring over maps of the area in the present day trying to marry up these descriptions with features that are still in the landscape today! I’m not sure that any of these described features actually relate to Monkwood but the description of the landscape itself sounds like it hasn’t changed for centuries. There are still plenty of old oaks in the hedges and fields, as well as aspen thickets and damp flushes full of bulrush, wood small-reed (a rarity in Worcestershire) and sedges. There are small hills with woodland at the top that could be the ‘timber ridge’ and there are small streams and brooks that probably still run the same course as they did years ago. I wonder how we would describe our land boundaries that run around Monkwood and Green Farm now. Perhaps something like “By the willow pools running north to the stag-headed oak; up past the bluebell glade and the blackthorn thickets; towards the western lime woods then turning south to the wet meadows; alongside the Green to the hazel coppice and from the hazel coppice back to the willow pools”.

Bechstein's bat at Monkwood. Photo by Nick Underhill-Day.

My second highlight from this year was a new species for Monkwood that was discovered this summer. The rare Bechstein’s bat has been recorded at a couple of our woodland reserves over the years but until now, not in Monkwood. On an early summer night in May when other people were catching glimpses of the northern lights over the UK, ecologists from Swift Ecology were hard at work putting up mist net traps in Monkwood. With the help of specialist sound equipment, bats were lured towards the trap and were gently held amongst the folds of the net until a licenced bat handler extricated them. Once in the hand, it’s easier to check the bat for general condition, take measurements and identify what species it is. Lo and behold, one was a male Bechstein’s bat!

We have very few records in west Worcestershire for this species and as I say, none until now for Monkwood so the team were very excited. Bechstein’s bats tend to live in ‘cluttered’ woodlands, i.e. woodlands with a lot of understorey. With all the coppiced hazel underneath the oaks at Monkwood, it’s surely a perfect place for these bats and hopefully we can do more surveys to see if there are any females and therefore, a breeding population.

Newly planting saplings on Bullocks Ground, Green Farm. Photo by Dominique Cragg.

Finally, how could I not mention tree planting! Woodland creation at Green Farm to extend, protect and connect Monkwood to the wider landscape is something that we’ve been working towards for nearly five years. Just a few weeks ago on the 1^st December, we started to make this vision a reality by holding the first of many tree planting work parties. Over 100 people have helped to plant young oaks, limes, hornbeams, hazels, wild cherries and more and it’s wonderful to see new woodland start to emerge at ground level.

I saw a quote the other day that went something like ‘The person who plants a tree in the full knowledge that they will never see it in its maturity, is a person who’s just started to understand the meaning of life.’ I just felt that this sums up exactly how I feel about the restoration project at Green Farm and the long-term vision to expand Monkwood into the wider landscape. We won’t get to see it in its full glory because it takes a long time for lost ecosystems to reform and become fully-functioning again. But to just be able to start the process connects us to something far bigger than us, which is the wonderful planet we live on and the natural world that we depend on. Surely that is a good enough reason to create something fabulous for wildlife.

Have a lovely Christmas and New Year!