In June, our Environmental Special Interest Group (SIG) held its first in-person event with two site visits hosted by Network Rail and the City of London Corporation. Gordon Pfetscher FICFor, SIG member and Head of Estate at the Woodland Trust, attended this event and has reported back on the day’s activities.
Site One – Network Rail’s Hadley Wood Station, London Borough of Enfield
Hadley Wood is famous. Sir Nigel Gresley, the man who designed the world’s fastest steam train, Mallard, commuted from here. Michael Portillo, now known for his epic railway journeys was the former member of Parliament for the area. And, in June 2024, the Institute of Chartered Foresters’ Environmental Special Interest Group visited! But why a railway station at the bottom of Hertfordshire? Ironically it wasn’t the fact that there is wood in the name. The tree fame, or possibly more appropriately infamy, is due to the fact that the railway removed almost all of the trees in the area around the station in 2018.
Speaker Dr Neil Strong MICFor, Biodiversity Strategy Manager at Network Rail, explained that operationally the work did need to be done. Leaves on the line is a real thing and not only are there safety issues associated with this, but the train performance penalty costs on one of the busiest railway lines on the network can be astronomical. However, as he pointed out the specification provided was not followed, the communication with the local residents was not done and there was little apparent regard for any wildlife on site. Within days there were articles in the papers and questions in the House of Parliament and Neil spent much of the 2018 Institute’s conference on the phone. The rail minister at the time, Jo Johnson, told Network Rail to stop all vegetation management on the network. He then commissioned a review to look at how the railway should account for people and wildlife when doing this work. John Varley of Clinton Devon Estates was asked to chair with support from the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB). The review team met with staff, contractors, residents, communities, government organisations and non-governmental organisations and held a series of workshops. Meanwhile, the Tree Council were asked to mediate between Network Rail and the Hadley Wood Association and the Hadley Wood Rail User Group – both organised and well-connected committees. Introducing an independent tree expert helped the railway to explain what they were trying to achieve, but also, and importantly, meant the community gets knowledgeable support. The outcome of this mediation was not only an apology from the railway, but also a promise to learn from Hadley Wood.
Jon Stokes, Director of Trees, Science and Research at the Tree Council joined us on site. He was able to explain how he suggested that there was an opportunity to re-establish the ‘railway hedge’ at Hadley Wood, but by trying some new techniques and how the location alongside the operational railway was turned into a live trial site. Jon told us that the railway hedge was originally developed in the mid-19th Century to fulfil the obligation, in the beginning, to keep the labourers off the adjacent land. This eventually changed to a law that people and livestock should be kept off the railway. Whilst many of the railway’s boundaries are now steel, the basic planting design of hedges across Britain, possibly the world, is still based on the railway’s staggered double row of whips.
Jon, together with Network Rail’s John Keeley, then described the trial plots used on the site; whip planting by supervised volunteers and contractors, natural regeneration and direct seeding. The failure of the natural regeneration plots enabled the Tree Council’s Jackie Shallcross to explain about the planting of the first Miyawaki hedge as ongoing research. The regeneration probably failed due to the lack of any particular seed source, though there were a few stems from coppice regrowth. The disparity between the volunteer and contractor planting did raise a few eyebrows with the assembled group. The trees planted with love had a 15-20% better survival rate and in places were two metres taller than those that we had ‘paid to be planted’. John and Jon also explained the variation in plots for the direct seeding – those that had been sown and lightly raked in had been scavenged by the local wildlife, the seeds that were trench planted produced over 100 saplings per square metre and were beginning to complete with the contractor planted stock for height.
In summary, Neil was able to explain how, ironically, the work that was done in 2018 was the catalyst for so much good work across the railway since. The Varley Review was completed in five months, but the six years since has seen innovative biodiversity assessments and development of new guidance. Neil and colleagues from Network Rail who had joined the visit as attendees told how there was still work to do, but were able to talk about the culture change that is happening. Jon pointed out that the community contact, across Britain, that the Tree Council had was less frequent, especially in terms of major issues. The community that was up in arms in May 2018 turned out to support a planting event at the launch of the Varley review and again at the five year celebration.
The visit was a great success and thanks go to Network Rail’s John Keeley for his tireless support and enthusiasm, and for making the site accessible for the SIG visit. Thanks to the Tree Council for supporting the day and leading the discussions.
Site two – Corporation of London’s Epping Forest
The afternoon visit was kindly hosted by a team from the Corporation of London to their Epping Forest. The themes for this part of the visit included wood-pasture management with an active (re)pollarding programme and ancient tree management with high public access pressures.
We met up at the Epping Forest Visitor Centre at Chingford and were welcomed by Jaqueline Eggleston, their newly appointment (that very week) Superintendent. Epping Forest is a rare remnant of lowland ancient wood pasture at scale boasting around 55,000 ancient trees; more than any at a single site anywhere in England. At almost 2,500 hectares, it is the largest open space in London. The forest was one of the earliest publicly accessible and protected landscapes in England, pre-dating the UK’s National Parks by almost 80 years. Much of the forest is of national and international conservation importance with two thirds of it designated as a SSSI and SAC due to the large number of ancient trees.
After a brief photo opportunity with Ben Murphy, Chairman of the Epping Forest & Commons Committeee at City of London, we headed out across the open grazed Chingford Plain which merged with the haunting trees of Bury Wood. This part of the visit was ably hosted by Tanith Cook, Head of Conservation at Epping and Andy Froud, Biodiversity Officer. Some of the stands of dense, pollarded holly and yew had an eerie feeling to them whilst the transformation in light levels, reflected by a veritable explosion of the dormant understory was visually very striking once we reached a recently re-pollarded stand of hornbeam. Andy explained various different techniques which were employed in an attempt to successfully re-pollard different species. Not one single method was considered appropriate for all tree species. It’s probably fair to say that re-pollarding such majestic trees is as much an art as it is a science.
The herd of English longhorn cattle used for extensive conservation grazing eluded us although we discussed the use of NoFence technology using an app and GPS technology to quickly and simply modify grazing regimes across the mosaic of habitats without the use of fixed infrastructure, something which wouldn’t legally be allowed on common land.
At Barn Hoppit, the discussions were led by Gavin Bodenham, Epping’s Arborist Supervisor. Their management approach of ancient oak trees in a busy public space was approved of by SIG members. The afternoon was concluded by a fascinating guided tour of the nearby Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge, intrinsically linked to the management and history of the forest as it was built in 1543 for King Henry VIII and renovated by order of Queen Elizabeth I.
