Warleigh Nature Reserve

The Avon Wildlife Trust very kindly donated some scythes and sponsored two scything workshops for our team. We invited a few others to join us from a Bristol charity too.

The workshops were led by Kai Lange from HORTUS Heart who turned out to be a fantastic instructor. He showed us how to put the scythes together and how to sharpen them correctly before showing us how to use them. We were very lucky with the weather, especially as we had had a whole week of constant rain before the second workshop.

It turns out that neither sharpening scythes nor scything itself is easy (we should have known) but with practice everyone began to show some improvement.

The course participants had a good time and found the workshops useful:

“The scything course today was extremely enjoyable, of course in a beautiful setting.

Kai was passionate whilst also being calm, supportive and kind. I sadly could use a lot more practice to master it but feel that he gave plenty of pointers to help me find my way. He was knowledgeable and clearly experienced. The whole group got engaged and were motivated to keep trying. The equipment provided was good too with plenty of opportunity to sharpen and tinker.”

We had hoped to have some scything session to practise our new skill, but the next few weeks were very wet. We will start earlier next year.

During Saturday’s regularly scheduled volunteer day at Warleigh Nature Reserve, Phil mobilised some regular and some new volunteers to tackle some of the largest chunks of Himalayan Balsam. It’s spent decades crawling up the hill from the river in an area previously so overgrown we couldn’t get access, but we cut our way in and found a lot more than we were expecting!

The plan is straightforward: cut it down before it goes to seed, so fewer seeds wash downstream into the river and connecting waterways each year. The bigger ambition is to push our clearance as far upstream as we can, since every plant we stop here is one less plant overrunning the banks further down. It's a slow campaign, but a winnable one.

To establish a solid baseline, and make sure the work we're doing is creating provable improvements to the biodiversity and bioabundance at Warleigh Nature Reserve, Protect Earth have teamed up with the amazing ecologists at RSK Wilding: Richard Prew, Eve Proudlove, Julia Dickinson and Mark Lang. They spent the day conducting habitat and bird surveys, rummaging around our woodlands, wetlands, and grasslands, turning over every leaf and rock to collect data which they will use to explore the enhancement potential of these habitats. We cannot wait to see the full results of what they found, but so far, it sounds like our goals are compatible with the reality on the ground!

In March 2026 Phil took a group of volunteers to Warleigh and planted 500 new trees! Species planted included Black Alder and Aspen. With Warleigh being a mixture of land types, it’s important we plant the right trees in the right places. A big thank you to our funding sponsor Bates Wells, for helping to fund this event.

All trees were planted with biodegradable guards and stakes, with even the smallest volunteers helping! It was a real family day out, and everyone is looking forward to returning to the site for the next stretch of work.

Adjacent to the fields of Warleigh Nature Reserve, Protect Earth has taken in 11 acres of ancient woodland to restore and manage. Named Hazel Wood, it contains, amongst other very exciting things, an area of hazel coppice which has become overgrown during the last 30 years or so, which makes this section dark and less biodiverse. To encourage a more diverse growth of species and canopy levels we decided to make a start and coppice as much as we could before the end of February, the end of the coppicing season. Fun fact: we’re told it's named Hazel Wood not for the species within, but for a previous owner named Hazel.

Phil and the team spent the day diligently training with a coppicing expert, then, invited several groups of volunteers to come and learn how to coppice too. The volunteers used handsaws, and in between volunteer days those members of the team qualified to use chainsaws tackled the larger trunks.

As you can see, the result was a beautiful, bright clearing which will allow more biodiversity to emerge. So far, the harvest of hazel has been put to good use to create steps for the compost toilet and posts for the deer fencing around the clearing to prevent deer nibbling the tender new shoots.

We were very keen to start work developing the wetlands so as soon we had finished clearing barbed wire and creating pathways through the nature reserve we turned our attention to the area nearer the River Avon, a rare chalk stream.

The team began by blocking the land drains and building leaky dams in old drainage trenches to slow the water down, encouraging ponds to form.

A few days later we sent up a drone to get some bird’s eye views, and we could already see a big difference.

We were excited to find toads and other wildlife moving in soon after that, and water was now staying on the land for weeks after rain events instead of just days.

While waiting for our purchase of Warleigh Nature Reserve to complete, we talked to a number of neighbours. This neighbour asked if we could help with some woodland management, especially the removal of tree guards which had been there too long and were too much for her to manage.

We were happy to help out, and together with a group of corporate volunteers from The LandApp, the landowner and her friends we were able to remove the guards. It look a little longer than expected so we didn’t have time to do one or two other little jobs we had planned, so we will visit again in the future to carry our more tasks.

The volunteers gave some positive feedback. “Everyone had a great time and we managed to remove hundreds of tree guards for the land owner. The leaders gave very clear instructions and we were provided with all of the information we needed before the event.”

The landowner was very grateful. “Yesterday was a wonderful day and we had a brilliant time. The volunteers were such a hardworking group and the day was a complete success. They were a brilliant group of people. It was great to meet Phil’s team and we really appreciated the help.”