The new year brought welcome news that the Ightham Mote Garden team, four professionals plus volunteers, would be giving us five days of their working time in January.  Dates were arranged, spread throughout the month. On the first of these, volunteers from our regular Nutters joined with the Mote gardeners and volunteers.

Ightham Mote garden team and volunteers

The plan was to take out as many of the birches, willow and ash saplings as possible and to work across the rows, trimming back the nut trees at the same time, just enough to allow the tractor-mower to work across as well as down the rows.

 In this way it is hoped to keep the saplings from sprouting and growing back and to keep the brambles down.   Although spraying has been used in the past for bramble control we are hoping to avoid this if possible on grounds both of cost and environmentalism.

With the additional help work went ahead faster than I would have believed possible.  By the end of the third of the five days all the rows had been cleared, thanks not least to the contribution by our chain-saw expert and some very energetic work by all concerned, using nothing more than pruning saws and loppers.

We enjoyed some good weather and one especially lovely frosty morning.

Lovely frosty morning

Then came the snow and work on that day had to be abandoned.


Catkins are beginning to unfurl in the more sheltered parts of the plat but it is too early still for the red-tassels of the female flowers to appear. One or two daring primroses have also been spotted.

On the last day with the Mote team we worked mainly on taking out the young wands which have grown with much energy since the major cutting back of the previous year.  Clearing the rows of saplings has left large quantities of brushwood to be dragged out and burned.  That and the seemingly interminable job of 'wanding' will keep us busy in the coming weeks.

End of Year 1

In October John,our 'professional', returned to cut overgrown wands out from the remaining dozen or so rows on the road side of the plat, and Carol came in soon after to top prune those trees.  This meant that once again the rows were filled with the familiar sight of piles of cut wood which would have to be dragged out and disposed of by bonfires

But help was at hand;  Maria from K-College had asked to bring her group of students with learning disabilities to see if there was an opportunity for outdoor work.  They came, with Mark driving the K College minibus, on the first Monday in November and pitched in with gusto, making a good start on the dragging and burning.

Maria then emailed to ask if they could come every Monday in November and this request was quickly agreed to. Their enthusiasm was infectious and the regular team and the students all got on like a house - or pile of wood - on fire.

By the last of their Mondays all the wood had been cleared from the rows and burned or sorted, the longer poles to be bundled up and sold in the spring as 'bean poles', the rest turned into small piles of ash.

This was very much what the vision of the plat is all about, i.e. creating volunteering opportunities for  all sorts of different groups.  In this case the students had loved the challenge and completed an amazing quantity of work and the regular team had enjoyed showing them how -  helping them and encouraging their efforts and the interaction had been profitable for everyone concerned.  K College Students: 'We loved having you and hope you will be back in the spring (there will be plenty more to do!)'

Hot on the heels of the College students we were helped out, on a very, very wet day, by a combined group from VAWK (Voluntary Action West Kent) and the Green Gym of Ashford plus tcv volunteers and we also welcomed new volunteers from Ightham itself. 

On this occasion we tackled the wands and the unwanted saplings of the lower young bloc of nut trees and, until the downpour stopped play just short of completion we had finished the work on 99.9% of that area   (the rest to be polished off by our Ightham volunteers the following week)

And so into December - a year almost to the day when we had started work in 2011.  We began work again on the main bloc, cutting out wands and clearing saplings and were joined on one occasion by the Mote Gardeners Team who have promised to come and spend more time with us in the new year.  They will be most welcome as, frankly, the amount of work is intimidating and we may have to compromise on what we can get done in the coming year.


Nothing daunted however, a 'post-Christmas workout' was planned for December 28th.  Few of the regular team were able to join in this time and the weather was looking dire.  It turned out drier than we had feared and five of us set about eliminating those unwanted saplings from between the trees, dragging and dropping onto piles for burning later, when the weather dries out, and working off some of the Christmas excess.

All of which brings us to the end of 2012, a year in which, thanks  partly to the very dry conditions of December 2011 to March2012 , an enormous amount was of work was completed on the plat.  But, due probably to the squirrel problem, not much of a crop was harvested in September and plenty more work remains to be done. This was always going to be a 3- or 4-year project and there is no reason to despair: at least no reason apart from the squirrels, which take more than half the crop.  And if anyone has an answer to that problem we would very much like to hear from them.