One of our neighbours a few miles away is Phil at Wildlife Croft Skye, a woodland croft, and an inspiration of ours.
He and his family have been planting and managing their croft for years now using sustainable regenerative principles and have a wonderful. maturing array of local trees growing on their land. He propagates and grows using locally collected cuttings and seeds.
Recently he advertised that he was offering some of his hedging, shrub and young tree seedlings for sale, and we jumped at the chance to get our hedging started before Spring advanced too far.
Having tree stock generated from locally grown seeds means a good chance that they’ll thrive in our wet and windy conditions, having grown in the same.
We bought a trailer load of cuttings and seedlings so that we could start hedging inside the newly installed deer-fenced area of the croft. The ground is saturated at the moment now that the snows have cleared, making it a good time to dig these in (and slightly less work, although poor husbands back is disputing that this morning!)
This is a good mix of Rowan, Oak, Scot’s Pine, Hawthorn, Grey Willow, Wych Elm, Hazel,
Purple Willow, Downy Birch, Holly, Goat Willow,
Elder, Honeysuckle and Dog rose.
Husband and Phil worked through the rain heroically to clear and plant most of them on the croft yesterday. They’ll eventually provide shelter from the wind for our vegetable beds and the fruit orchard that we plan to plant next spring.
They’ll also most importantly provide a haven for wildlife, insects and birds, and food in the form of holly, elderberries, brambles, rosehips and rowan berries. Bringing this croft back from bare land to a richer, more diverse ecosystem is important to us both, and depends upon this.
It feels good to be taking the first steps towards our ultimate goal of a woodland croft. It’s an enormous task, but we’re determined. Watching David Attenborough on Wild Isles over the last week just reinforces how much we’ve lost already and how important every patch of nature is.
Ravencroft Skye 