Sunday 1st June 2025
Dunscar Wood is a relatively new woodland near Egerton, Bolton. The wood occupies 5.7 hectares of what was formerly green fields which were bought by the Woodland Trust in 1998 as part of their millennial Woodlands on Your Doorstep project. Old maps do show a small patch of woods in the area but not of any great size or significance. You can find other posts about the work we’ve done at Dunscar here and here.
Today’s task was a different aspect of woodland management form planting and thinning. Instead of managing the trees themselves we were managing what grows between them, in this case Himalayan balsam. You can find out more about balsam and why we spend so much time getting rid of it on yet another post (sorry) here.
For the last couple of years we have been trying to reduce the presence of balsam, and it looks like we are actually succeeding to some extent; the areas that last year were thick with balsam are now a bit more sparse, but work still needs to continue. This session, however, was cut short by heavy rain.
Thanks to Caroline and Tom for organising, and for all of the other work they but into running the group. Also thanks to everyone who turned.
