Practical Skills for Small Woodland Management

A one-day Surrey Wildlife Trust course teaching hands-on woodland management skills such as coppicing, thinning and building dead hedges.

This one-day course at Nower Wood Educational Nature Reserve is aimed at owners of small woodlands who want to care for them actively. It opens with a discussion of woodland ecology, seasonal constraints, protective equipment and power tools, before moving outdoors to practise coppicing and thinning with hand tools, including felling small trees. Participants also learn to build deer exclosures, dead hedges and wind rows. The tutor is Ross Packman, a former Surrey Wildlife Trust countryside worker now an engagement ranger at Durlston Country Park.