Earlier this year, thanks to The Woodland Trust, we completed the pilot scheme to plant 20,000 trees of birch, rowan, thorns and other smaller scrub species. These were bolstered by another 15,000 later in the same season funded by Cumbria Wild Life Trust’s Pollinator Project.
As we don’t like to use guards there is a risk that rogue sheep, hare and deer can cause damage but luckily that damage is less than we had expected and almost all the whips have survived. A fair few have been nibbled but as these are scrub species they are less vulnerable, and if not eaten too much benefit from a bit of natural pruning.
It’s only the first season so we can’t claim any success yet but we are quietly confident that the pilot will be a success and Low Fell will have trees again after several hundred years of being bereft of anything higher than knee height.
