Brankley Pastures

Brankley Pastures

Nature Reserve under construction!

Brankley Pastures was mostly covered in arable crops less than five years ago. The Trust acquired the land with the intention of recreating rare wood pasture, which would have previously covered much of the area. Different techniques are being trialled in restoring the land to a variety of wildlife rich habitats.

Highglights

• Follow our family friendly trail around the reserve and find out more about the wildlife we’re protecting and the landscape we’re recreating.

• Most of the site is still a ‘work in progress’ but follow the path.

• We hope to be using an innovative technique called soil inversion to create our new hay meadow this summer.

Restoring a historic landscape

Until relatively recently the land before you was farmed for wheat and other arable crops. But if you could travel back in time to the 1700s you would have seen a very different landscape. This area was formerly part of the Needwood Forest, a collection of seven estates including the area you see before you, and extended to over 9,000 acres of largely wooded parkland or ‘wood pasture’.

Large numbers of trees were cleared during the enclosures of the 1800s when land was claimed for agriculture. Part of the reserve and some of the nearby woodlands are relicts of this historic landscape which the Trust is now trying to recreate at Brankley Pastures.

What is wood pasture…..or when is a woodland not a woodland?!

Wood Pasture is a special type of woodland. As the name suggests it is a cross between grassland and woodland. Grazing animals are a key component of wood pastures and have been instrumental in creating these historic landscapes. The trees would have provided shelter for grazing animals while the grassland provided food. Ancient, veteran trees are a characteristic feature of wood pastures and one of the reasons why this habitat is so special and so difficult to recreate!

Not just dead wood

Dead wood is a key component of good wood pasture habitat. A detailed invertebrate surveys of part of the site, known as Oakwood Pastures, has revealed over 500 different species of insect. 23 of these are nationally scarce and associated specifically with dead or decaying wood. Most of these insects aren’t found on the rest of the site yet and it will be many hundreds of years before we get any naturally occurring dead wood. In the meantime we’re looking at the possibility of bringing in timber to create new dead wood habitat piles.

Recipe for creating a wood pasture

What you’ll need…

• One piece of land.
• Nearby hedgerows, woodland and mature trees to provide seeds.
• Grazing animals.
• A good handful of help from mother nature.
• A heaped minibus full of willing volunteers.
• A sprinkling of grazing animals.

First take your land. Disturb the soil to allow tree seedlings to establish. Give mother nature a helping hand by using volunteers to scatter acorns and other tree seed which can be collected on site or nearby. Gradually reintroduce some cattle – not too many so that they browse the new trees, not too few so that grasses smother the seedlings. Mix gently and allow to settle for several hundred years.

It’s a slow process to recreate a historic landscape which will be hundreds of years in the making. We’ve made a start but if you can’t wait that long then why not follow the trail around the reserve to discover Oakwood Pastures, part of the reserve which still has a good number of ancient trees and is grazed by cattle in the traditional manner.

We may have started the process but it will be future generations that will see the results of our work. If you would like to support the restoration of the reserve then why not sponsor a tree – download the leaflet for more details.

This site lies within The National Forest. Embracing 200 square miles of the Midlands, The National Forest is taking root in the heart of England across parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire.  The idea, first conceived in the late 1980s, was to transform the area into a rich mosaic of land uses, framed by woodland, for the pleasure and benefit of the community, landscape and environment.

The developing mix of habitats here including the new woodland and wood-pasture has been developed as part of this bold landscape scale change project.  The National Forest now has 18% woodland cover in 2010 from the 6% start in 1991. For more information about The National Forest visit www.nationalforest.org