Clent Hill's Wet Flushes

Over the winter period, volunteers and students from Bournville College have been undertaking woodland management operations in selected areas to improve opportunities for wildflowers. Across Clent, Adam’s, and Walton Hills, seasonal flushes emerge in a number of small valleys, varying soil moisture levels, creating a series of niche habitats and in some cases, mini streams of flowing water.

Opposite Leaved Golden Saxifrage

Historically, grazing on the hills is likely to have decreased the opportunities for these areas to develop as willow and birch woodlands; and livestock trampling would’ve created an amount of mud where fresh seeds could germinate. Today, we need to physically intervene in order that wildflowers have an opportunity to flourish. Cuckoo Flower or Ladies Smock, Opposite Leaved Golden Saxifrage, along with species of sedge and fern will all benefit from the temporary reduction of tree cover: the presence of nectar being an additional resource for invertebrates.

Where possible, timber resulting from the operations will be sold as firewood to raise funds to support the work on the Hills.

These areas now will be left to re-grow and provide future nesting habitat for birds. In the meantime, we will identify adjacent areas where wildflowers are suffering from shading and schedule further work. Thereby managing a diverse range of habitats within a confined area to maximise opportunities for a range of wildlife.

Another Lost Boundary at Kinver Edge

As part of routine maintenance, BT dispatched a company of tree surgeons recently to remove obstructions around and between two telegraph poles on Kingsford Lane.

After a few phone calls, and a meeting on-site, we agreed the best course of action was to remove to ground level the young oaks which were growing up through the line. This would prevent the need for further maintenance in the short term. It was agreed also to merely reduce the height of some of the hawthorn which was causing an obstruction.

Stepping back from the area of work, there is an obvious line of hawthorn which would’ve once formed a hedged field boundary.

There are the remains of hedgerows in other places at the site, now swamped by young tree growth. Elsewhere, the remains of stone walls are now lost to the same process of ecological succession.

To conserve this remaining hedgerow as a testament to Kinver’s pastoral history, and to create an added ecological niche, we will look to managing this relic hedge over the next few years.