Wealden Times | WT171 | May 2016 | Restoration & New Build supplement inside

competition
WIN A THREE SEATER SANDHURST
BENCH WORTH £350 FROM
MEMORIAL BENCHES UK
Fables
From
The Farm
Jane looks to her
coppiced woodland
for garden help
Adding a bench to your garden can add style, class and comfort
as well as somewhere from which to enjoy the view. Memorial
Benches UK, not only make memorial and commemorative
benches, they also create beautiful garden benches with classic
styling and solid construction to ensure the highest levels of
durability and comfort. They offer a wide range of garden benches,
so you can find the perfect bench for you. Their range includes
small, lighter benches which are highly portable, heavier wooden
benches with flat armrests and their extra heavy duty range of
benches all of which will last for decades – while still staying
comfortable enough to sit on all day.
Maintenance is not an issue with these beautiful garden benches,
as any dirt or algae can simply be washed off with warm soapy
water and a nylon brush. This means you can leave your
garden bench outside all year round without worrying about
it deteriorating. They can also provide breathable garden seat
covers and high quality cushions, if you prefer to have your bench
covered. Memorial Benches pride themselves on offering the
highest levels of customer service, and their qualified team are
more than happy to discuss exactly what it is you need. While
some manufacturers opt for cheap, low quality wood, all their
garden benches are made from high quality teak and traditionally
joined meaning that they are long-lasting as well as beautiful.
For more information visit www.memorialbenchesuk.co.uk
or call 01580 201518 and ask to speak to Chris
For your chance to win a three seater
Sandhurst bench worth £350 from
Memorial Benches UK, just answer
this question: ‘What wood is used to
make one of their benches?’ Enter your
answer with your contact details* in
the online form at www.wealdentimes.
co.uk/competition or post to: Garden
Bench Competition, Wealden Times,
21 Stone Street, Cranbrook, Kent
TN17 3HF by 17 June 2016. There is
no cash alternative and the prize must
be taken. *All entrants’ details will be
passed on to Memorial Benches UK
and Wealden Times Events. Please
let us know if you do not wish your
details to be passed on.
E
very spring I approach my vegetable growing with
the same boundless enthusiasm and by every July
I am overwhelmed by it all. You’d think by now it
would have occurred to me to scale back the March/April
end of the operation and so retain a modicum of control later
in the summer. But for 2016 it’s been business as usual!
During the dark winter months I poured over all those seed
catalogues and made a New Year’s resolution to be moderate
but, blow me down, if by February the seed companies hit you
with irresistible offers like ten packets for £10 or buy-one-getone-free.
And bingo, I’m off again on a purchasing jamboree.
April was spent sowing trays and trays of different seeds and
so in May I’ll be big-time pricking out and then hopefully by
the end of the month planting out. But before that can happen
I’ll need to make my annual trip to our patch of hazel coppice
to collect pea sticks, bean poles and some longer whippy
branches to create sweet pea tee-pees.
East Sussex is the most wooded county in the UK and most
traditional farms in this part of the world include at least two
or three small parcels of woodland or shaws which would have
been coppiced in the past to supply firewood and a whole host
of other valuable materials.
Coppicing is the process that occurs when a tree is felled and
new sprouts arise from the cut stump known as a stool. This
process can be carried out over and over again and is sustainable
over several hundred years with the stool getting ever larger in
diameter. All broadleaf trees can be coppiced but some – ash,
hazel, oak, sweet chestnut and lime are the strongest, while
beech, cherry and poplar really don’t respond very well. And
conifers won’t do it at all.
Coppicing has been traced back to Neolithic times by
archaeologists who have excavated wooden tracks over boggy
ground made entirely of coppiced material. Through the 18th
and 19th centuries, coppiced woodlands in the High Weald
provided charcoal for the all important smelting of iron,
however, by the mid-twentieth century coppicing was in rapid
decline and most coppice woods fell into neglect.
But the good news is that now for the first time in recent
history many neglected coppices are coming back into use
as we embrace a more sustainable lifestyle and appreciate the
environmental benefits that coppicing can bring to woodland.
Coppice is felled in blocks termed coupes (or fells, cants or
haggs) with five or six being cut in any season. We have been
coppicing our woods for the past ten years, albeit on a one
woman and her chainsaw scale but, when I’ve harvested this
year’s poles, sticks and branches there’s every possibility we
might just complete our first hagg (favourite descriptive). So
you see if we’re to save our woods I just have to keep planting
the seeds….
Follow Jane on Twitter @coopers_ farm
Congratulations to Varsha Wong who won our April competition for a
Harvey Water Softener and its free installation