Hello,
We have agreed to take care of an old hazel coppice adjacent to our property. The site is approximately 4 acres of sloped ground with a small burn running through it. There are the old footings of a water powered sawmill that are not usable.
The Hazel has been left for at least 25+ years. There are also Alder, Ash (some suffering from dieback) plus the odd Gean, Elm and Elder.
This Winter we would like to make some in roads, but is it daunting! We’ve coppiced 3 large Hazels this past Winter to see what happens to them. There is a huge amount of storm damage and fallen wood. I am very lucky to have a qualified tree surgeon for a brother, but even he is feeling some what overwhelmed.
What would be the best practice here? We don’t want to disrupt too much too soon, but every year it’s left, more damage gets done.
Based in NE Scotland.
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Hello, welcome to the Hub. Sounds like a great project! I would say it’d be a good idea to get someone familiar with hazel coppice along to have a look around and give some advice. Or if you were open to the idea it could be a great informal training event that we’d be happy to help organise later in the summer?
Do you think the hazel has been coppiced before? It could be hard to tell after 25 years I guess.
It’s good to have a plan for the product, so what are you wanting to achieve by coppicing it? If you want certain products then this will affect the rotation length. Or is it mainly for biodiversity?
Without seeing it, it’s tricky but with my fairly limited experience of our own coppice which is around the same size I’d say priorities are:
- plan access and extraction routes for material first
- determine number of coupes needed for product
- divide the woodland up in that number, draw a map and mark it out on the ground / trees
I guess it’d make sense to start coppicing with the worst storm damaged areas.
Regarding the ash, I tried coppicing some here and the regrowth has been even more prone to dieback. So I’d be inclined to leave that if the dieback isn’t too bad.
Hi Kelly,
Check out Abel To Woodsman on Youtube - he’s very experienced in restoring hazel coppice, and informative on a broad range of woodland topics. Based in Yorkshire, I think, but hazel is hazel wherever it grows.
Good luck with your project,
Rob Drake (March and Spring Woods coppice case study).
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I would be quite keen to host a coppicing workshop. We also have some out of shape willow and alder here.
I think we will start with what has been wind blown across the burn as that could cause some flooding problems later down the road.
If I remember I will take some photos and upload them.
Thanks again.
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Keep us posted! If you’d be interested in organising a visit then drop me an email at thewildcroft@gmail.com and we can discuss that. Cheers.