Restoration Work in Snipes Dene

Wednesday 26^th March 2014

Several years ago much of Snipes Dene was cleared of conifer trees. The conservation team’s remit today was to help get the restoration process underway. A group of 10 volunteers headed off to one end of Snipes Dene to plant out 150 oak saplings (whips). Three small areas were each to receive 50 saplings.

After selecting a suitable spot to plant a sapling, a small area of ground was screefed ( a process of scraping away vegetation to expose a bare patch of earth, thus removing any competition from the newly planted sapling). The saplings were notch planted:  two deep notches into the ground at right angles, to form a "T" shape and a flap of earth was lifted so that the tree could be inserted into the gap. The notch was then closed by treading around the tree at the same time keeping the stem vertical. A protective plastic tube was then placed around the sapling and held in place by a wooden stake.



Preparation Work



Fitting Protective Tube





 

The Right Way up! Notice the flared edge
which prevents damage tot the growing sapling.

 

By lunchtime the task was complete, so 5 of us headed off to another part Snipes Dene to thin out silver birch trees as we had done last week in West Wood.

 

 

One of the planting sites

 

At a later date there will be more tree planting in Snipes Dene, including alder and other native species.

Further signs of spring abound with lesser celandine, dog’s violet, coltsfoot and cowslip. It will soon be time to start some survey work.

Phil Coyne



 

What we joined for

19 March 2014

This time last year the lambs at Gibside got their picture in the national newspapers wearing little orange jackets to protect them from the relentless wintry weather. Today, they looked just as lambs should look, though, if the weather forecasters have got it right, they may need that extra layer yet.

2 young lambs with their mother Parkfields

 

Your Gibside Wednesday Conservation Team was on its way for another round of destruction. This time we were in an area of West Wood which had been felled about nine or ten years ago. An assortment of native species in plastic protective tubes had partially replaced the alien conifers; the rest had been left to nature. Nature – in the shape of silver birch and downy birch and some holly –now covered the area densely. We were there to give nature a helping hand by clearing around the planted trees and substantially thinning out the birch to allow the remaining plants to thrive, though leaving some protection for the odd other native species that had taken root.

A well built logpile
 



Sizing up the problem

 

There is always a satisfaction in visiting this area, for it is the site of a number of well-constructed log piles built in October 2006 as the first task of the then newly formed Nature Conservation Volunteer Team.  As we worked, a pair of buzzards called and circled; nearby are a couple of old nesting sites for them to reconsider. Blue tits and great tits twittered through the day and a tawny owl called. Amongst the undergrowth we came across the redundant nest of a song thrush – beautifully crafted and mud lined, with tiny fragments of blue shell.

Song Thrush Nest

 

Along the woodland fringe, dogs mercury is in flower. In the woods, leaves of wood sorrel are poking through, and leaf buds are coming out on birch, hawthorn and honeysuckle. There are patches of frogspawn in the woodland ponds. We sat out of the wind for lunch in the sunshine, sheltered by more mature trees, and watched a pair of treecreepers spiral their way up a nearby sycamore; a ladybird wandered across an idle hand, and the tits kept up their song.

 

Scanning the woods for signs of the Buzzards

 

Pond in Parkfileds

Frog spawn

 

At the end of the day, we passed the lambs again on our way back to our base. We found another large patch of frogspawn in the field pond, and a pair of mallards took flight; a moorhen hid itself away among the brown leaves of last year’s marsh vegetation. Chickweed has started to flower and, as we climbed the field fence, a red kite swooped not more than twenty feet above us. Ah, this is what we joined for.

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne



Beautiful bulbs ...

Crocus angustifolia in the orangery

Today was one of the most beautiful days in the world.

Gibside sparkled like new under the blue sky and warming light that seem to have been borrowed from a dream of the perfect spring day. Our plants have responded in kind, opening their buds that had been tightly pursed for the last week, to revel in the warmth. Crocus in particular have been stretching their petals into goblets tailor-made to fill up with the liquid light.

Spring, perhaps, belongs to bulbs, and who would argue against Crocus angustifolia stealing the show with its golden glow?

Crocus Whitewell Purple in the walled garden

Crocus "Whitewell Purple" is currently livening up the herbaceous border in the walled garden; look out for its feathered orange stigma and the silvery sheen that coats the inside of its petals reflecting the sun in a white haze.

our first daffodils

The first daffodils are also in flower in the orangery. They grow through the mat of ground cover formed by Pachysandra terminalis, whose understated white flowers are the perfect foil for these showy narcissus heads.

Chionodoxa luciliae in the orangery

The sweet blue of Chionodoxa luciliae mirrored the sky this afternoon, and though their flowers only sit a few centimetres from the soil--or the gravel where they've happily seeded themselves--they pack a vibrant punch of colour.

the vagrant Anemone blanda

Finally, here's Anemone blanda, a woodland wanderer tucked in by the yew hedges en route to the orangery. It may look a little dishevelled, lacking in grace and finesse even, but that's all just a part of its charm.

This week's predicted run of halcyon days is sure to stir even more of our beautiful bulbs into bloom ... why not come and enjoy them in the sunshine.

stars of Scilla siberica

Quite childish and not very amusing

26 February 2014

The Ha-ha full of autumn leaves

Toiling in the Ha-ha has its moments, but standing in mud and water shovelling out load after load of sodden leaves is certainly not funny. As a distraction, we did give some time to pondering the origin of the word which, if you care to look it up, is strangely disappointing. The other strange thing about this Gibside Avenue Ha-ha is that it serves little amusing purpose; it’s a bit of an oddity – offering, as it does for much of its length, only an uninterrupted view of the adjacent grassy bank when viewed from the Hall. It serves the Chapel better, but a wall might have done. The livestock are kept at bay, of course, but you might otherwise wonder why it’s there. Well, clearly, it gives a distinct edge to the Avenue, but it is, perhaps, just as much a product of changing fashion in landscape design.

Clearing the Ha-ha

What the Ha-ha most certainly does do is gather vast quantities of autumn leaves, creating a drainage problem for its ditch, and a great deal of hard work for the Wednesday Conservation Volunteers. We seem to have done a lot of leaf clearing in the wet of recent weeks. But these last two weeks have found us doing more satisfying conservation work, looking after nature.

The building of the aerial walkway from the new car park to walled-garden and café area laid blight to the ground beneath. With some difficulty, digging down through builders’ rubble and soil-stabilizing netting, the team worked with Head Gardener Keith to plant an assortment of shrubs and trees including holly, yew, hazel and rose. Much of the timber that had been felled to make way for the walkway had already been used to build log piles back in the autumn. Log piles encourage invertebrates, and invertebrates attract anything that likes to eat them.

Whist some of the team were working under the walkway, others supervised visitors in cutting back the rhododendron in the woods by the Hollow Walk which constantly threatens to blanket the woodland floor and smother native plant life. In all one hundred and twenty visitors joined in – sixty-nine children and fifty-one bigger people; that would have been half-term week. This week the not-so-young Conservation Volunteers took great pleasure in burning the cuttings on three bonfires in the woods; quite childish really. 
 

The Team at Work Burning Rhododendron Cuttings

As well as being rampant, rhododendron can be quite substantial, so we used the larger bits to build another log pile in the woods. Across the track we removed rhododendron the size of trees to uncover an ageing sweet chestnut: a visible reward for our efforts.

Building the log pile

Column to Liberty and Sweet Chestnut now visible
after cutting back the rhododendrons

The Team head for home after another fruitful day.

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne