Woodland enhancement works in Bushy Park

We are undertaking selected tree works as part of a woodland enhancement project, in ‘North Wood’, northwest of the Woodland Gardens.

This work will help improve the woodland habitat and enhance biodiversity and will be delivered before nesting season.

We will coppice and thin selected sycamore trees along the Longford River. This will reduce leaf fall to the river, enhance marginal habitats, and improve water quality.

We will also remove four horse chestnut trees from within the woodland, which are in poor condition due to the disease bacterial canker and damage from leaf miner moths. We will plant nearly 1000 native tree and shrubs in the area - comprising 14 native tree and shrub species, including hornbeam, hazel, hawthorn, and dogwood.

These works will allow more sunlight into the woodland, helping the new trees and shrubs to grow, and create a more diverse woodland to benefit biodiversity, including birds, bats, and invertebrates.

Volunteers are supporting the project, working alongside biodiversity teams and woodland garden teams, coppicing elder trees and managing some areas of bramble, while creating dead hedges and habitat piles to provide shelter for wildlife.

Several ornamental cherry trees, which are currently in an area of North Wood will be expertly relocated to Fisher’s Lawn where they will have better aesthetic value.

This will allow us to improve the edge of North Wood as more natural habitat, by providing a sunny grassland and a scrub edge to the woodland. This graduation of habitat will benefit a wide range of wildlife, from invertebrates such as dragonflies and butterflies, to reptiles, (which like to bask in such conditions,) and woodland birds.

We will remove a number of ornamental dwarf conifers on Fisher’s Field, some of which have grown too large for the site while others are diseased.

We are redesigning the planting of this area to include native broadleaf species that will provide valuable biodiverse habitat for many years to come.