My experiences managing a woodland in the Scottish Highlands
Sitka spruce is the commonest tree in Comar Wood and also the commonest tree in Scotland, very successful but also highly controversial. My feelings towards this tree have been gradually evolving so I thought I would write a bit about it here. Sitka spruce in Scotland Non-native trees have acquired a negative reputation amongst many […]
I can’t complain too much about having to distance myself here at Comar Wood because it’s what I often do much of the time anyway! Life here hasn’t really changed a lot in the last couple of weeks and at least spring seems to be going ahead as normal. I thought for this post I […]
As you may have gathered from the management plan post, the main initial operation in Comar Wood is thinning of the Sitka spruce. I am pleased to say that this is now underway! Progress has been slower than I’d originally hoped because my time has been a bit limited recently. However, I’ve managed to find […]
Over last winter and spring we carried out our first major operation in the woodland – construction of access tracks. We need tracks so that we can get into the wood with a tractor to start gradually removing the Sitka spruce trees. After spending a lot of time on planning, it felt great to start […]
Following on from the previous post about what we currently have in the woodland, here is an overview of the proposed management plan. I fully expect that elements of it will change as I experience the realities of putting it into practice, but this is the current version. As you will have gathered, although it […]
Here is a more detailed description of the current state of the woodland. (For the idiot’s guide see my earlier post (https://womaninthewoods.net/we-bought-a-wood/). There is a post coming soon about our proposed management plan – they’re sort of linked, so I hope you are paying attention! Where is it? Comar Wood is in Strathglass, a fairly […]
Where do you start when you have just bought 50 acres of ancient woodland covered in Sitka spruce? After spending several years thinking about owning a wood, suddenly I had one and I had to figure out what to do with it. The first year was basically about that. Trees take a long time to […]
We had been on the look out for a woodland to buy for quite some time. One that was in need of attention; somewhere we could make a difference by bringing a piece of land back to life. Comar Wood is 50 acres of ancient woodland planted with Sitka spruce and fitted the bill perfectly. […]
