Up on the hill on the Hardwick estate is a tiny fragment of ancient woodland, called Nell’s Pightle.

For the last three winters I’ve been working in it to restore the old coppice. These old woodlands, on land too difficult to plough were commonplace. Every small community would need wood, and it grew to be harvested. Now they’re rare and special.

This site had been badly treated a long time ago and it was a golden opportunity to put into practice stuff I’d been learning about for years.

I did all the work with young people, and the farmer, James, has told me I can treat it as my own.

Which means I’d take much more care and pride in it than I might otherwise, and use it to help young people understand a bit of the fabric of our land.

These old sites are valuable because they hold hazels that are part of the local landscape. We could have gone to a nursery and bought five new hazel bushes but I wanted to preserve and propagate this old one.

We started out clearing the site. It was a tangle of bramble clematis blackthorn and rose. Then we could see the hazel we were after.

We part coppiced it and left some stems to be layered.

They were cut part way through, lowered to the ground and buried

In contact with soil

And covered with leaf litter. (This should help keep the new roots moist).

They were also pegged to the ground to make sure they didn’t move.

When they were all done we covered them up to prevent deer browsing the emerging shoots.

Some heavy poles were laid on top to help hold everything down

And finally the whole lot was hidden, and left to grow undisturbed.

It’s not likely to get touched for a few years, but we will go and check on progress.

It will be many many years before this site is fully restored but at least we’ve started