Park, garden or nature reserve?

PARK, GARDEN OR NATURE RESERVE?

Selwyn's Wood, October 2001

Park, garden or nature reserve? The question arose when we finished scrub-bashing along the driveway to the reserve. Huge gobbets of six-foot-high brambles and bits and bobs of saplings and suchlike, left us with a line of trees - "like a stately home" as one of the team commented.

Obviously we had overdone it.

We were meant to be a nature reserve, not a park where tree and flower (even bird?) are made to stand to attention and, where a thistle would send the head park-keeper in paroxysms of horror. So what had we done wrong?

Probably we had pruned the lower branches of the trees. That is normal when growing trees as a crop as we do on parts of the reserve - which is managed for both forestry as well as wildlife. So if we had not pruned, I think we would never have noticed!

Such are the differences between parks and gardens, and reserves: We don't rake leaves, cut up and dispose of fallen trees, and don't shave every blade of grass to within an inch of its life. And thistles are food for birds...

So, if you don't like gardening, join our "green team" at Sussex Wildlife Trust's Selwyn's Wood, near Cross-in-Hand.

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