Volunteers who have created a woodland haven for wildlife are celebrating their group’s 30th birthday.
The Friends of Ruscombe Wood was started in October 1992 to tend the area east of Ruscombe and Twyford, known locally as Bluebell Wood.
The volunteers celebrated by having a work party ‘coppicing’ or cutting back hazel trees on Saturday.
Then they settled in a quiet clearing to enjoy sandwiches, ‘toadstool’ cakes and chocolate ‘log’ cakes laid out on rustic tree log ‘tables’.
The group’s co-ordinator Steve Loyd made an edible ‘dead hedge’ out of Twiglets. The Friends weave tree prunings to make dead hedges for creatures to shelter and nest in.
Also at the celebration were local musicians, Ian Helmore, John Woodward, Dave Goulbourne, Kris King and Mike Walker, who sang songs about nature. Known as The Garden Lizard Band, they played at Polehampton Infants School’s music day this year.
One of the songs, The Nutmeg and the Green by Ian and Kris, includes words inspired by Ian’s walk through Ruscombe Wood then filled with bright yellow celandine flowers in spring.
Steve, 72, of Twyford, the Friends’ co-ordinator, says the wood reflects local history.
“The fields round here were fruit orchards. The wood was planted with hazel to provide stakes for the orchards in the 1920s,” he said.
“After the second world war there was no further coppicing of the hazel. But local people liked walking in Bluebell Wood.”
The Friends of Ruscombe Wood started thanks to former Ruscombe Parish Council chair Sarah Hyde.
“Sarah Hyde invited the land owners, Twyford Orchards Trust and also Berkshire, Bucks and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust and the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers to walk round the wood. Lots of local people including myself came,” said Steve.
“We were shown what conservation work was needed, mainly coppicing which lets in more light so hazels and flowers can flourish.” The Friends were formed and new permitted footpaths prevented widespread trampling.
Ten people regularly volunteer for work parties. Their effort means many flowers bloom including celandines, pink and white common spotted orchids and bluebells.
“The lighter a wood the more woodland butterflies and birds there are,” said Steve, who clearly loves the learning, work and friendships involved.
An ash tree is monitored to see when it first buds, an indicator of earlier springs. The wood is home to grass snakes, red kites, woodpeckers and protected great crested newts which use the pond. Rotting trees provide happy homes for insects and sometimes bats.
Veteran willow trees which are pollarded (cut back) are reminders of the old Twyford and Ruscombe willow rod industry producing baskets.
“The pond was either for animals grazing at Northbury Farm or was dug for clay for Ruscombe’s thriving brick industry,” said Steve. Youngsters doing their Duke of Edinburgh Awards worked in the wood and Scouts dug a new pond. The Friends received the Dorothy Morley award for conservation groups in Berkshire.
