Skellingthorpe Old Wood

Growing Up Green apprentices working hard at Skellingthorpe Old Wood

Some of the Growing Up Green funding goes towards apprenticeships and Liam, our current Growing Up Green apprentice has been hard at work learning the ropes alongside last year’s apprentice Billy who is now working towards a level 3.

Skellingthorpe Old Wood was a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) but is now devoid of rare butterflies due to the maturation on the woodland. In a natural world the fringes of the woodland would develop and the butterflies would gradually migrate to follow the new areas of wildflowers. However with a modern woodland there is rarely room for nature to take her course and she needs a little helping hand. As such we are thinning out the dense tree cover to allow natural light to once again reach the dormant wildflower seeds in the soil.

We expect a blooming of colour and an increase in the biodiversity of the site to follow our operations.

We are providing the forestry operations free of charge to the Woodland Trust in exchange for keeping the timber we extract. Our extraction method is a small tractor that can easily nip into the wood between trees to extract what we need without the requirement for wide tracks to be gouged into the land.

We have also been coppicing Hazel and taking out soft wood species with some of the hazel going for biomass energy and most of the soft wood going towards our own firewood business or for use by our construction team.