Tuesday and Thursday this week we were doing a range of tasks at Burdiehouse Burn. At Burdiehouse there are pockets of millennium woodland (trees planted with millennium grants that have not been managed at all since they were planted) We began working our way through the woodland crown lifting the trees to head height (removing all the branches below head height) this opened up the woodland from the path making it much more inviting and accessible, By crown lifting the trees there is also much more light reaching the forest floor which will allow shrubs, bushes and grasses to grow around the trees.
The difference between when we started and the end of the day was massive, the woods went from being dark and spooky looking to being light and inviting.
We were also cutting back willow that was growing low over the burn, the willow was causing problems by catching shopping trolleys and other debris that were floating down stream, this was then blocking the burn. We cut back the willow by having someone in welly boots in the burn with lopper cutting the willow and two people on the bank with ropes pulling the cut branches out. This job went well with only a couple of wet feet!
The final job we did at Burdiehouse was to scrape back some soil that had washed over the path, next week we will be building a wee retailing wall to stop the same thing happening in the future.