Burnham Beeches, Bluebell Woods and Eco-Schools

The legacy of Burnham Beeches and the bluebell woods

---

Many moons ago, before I was banished to the wilderness and unable to get online, I wrote a little about my involvement with Eco-Schools. In the intervening months I have managed to make a start on something I have wanted for quite a while. I have been allowed to use an area of the school grounds, already planted with a few young trees, to make what I hope will become a wonderful wild woodland area of native trees, plants and wildlife. I won’t bore you with the details but suffice to say I, on behalf of the school, applied for and was given a pack of native hedgerow shrubs which were planted by a group of school lads under the supervision of a volunteer gardener. I have managed to raise sufficient funds to order 200 woodland bulbs which are due to be delivered in the autumn AND my list of willing volunteer pupils is growing. Doing anything in a school takes for ever but eventually it is all coming together and this little dream is on the verge of becoming a reality. Just today I faxed an application for funding to buy 200 wild bluebell bulbs, bird nesting boxes and hanging bird baths.  We decided against bird feeding boxes because of the problem of keeping them full during the long school holidays. Eventually we hope to include butterfly and bug boxes but that is still in the planning stage.
I am actually quite excited at the prospect of having our own little bluebell wood right here in the town. I have loved bluebell woods ever since I was a small child. One of the places my parents took my sisters and I so many times was Burnham Beeches, a totally wonderful ancient woodland area. Now regarded as one of the best examples of ancient woodland in Britain, Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire was acquired by the City of London in 1880, in response to a threatened purchase by residential developers.
Despite its relatively small size of 220 hectares (540 acres), Burnham Beeches still attracts around 500,000 visitors a year. Every one who is lucky enough to visit appreciates its tranquillity and rich diversity of habitats and wildlife. I have no idea if that lush carpet of bluebells still covers the forest floor the way it did when I was a child but I will carry the memory of it forever. Nothing else in nature has that sapphire blue colour or that distinctive smell, when I was young these flowers were not rare, the habitats were not threatened and we played happily in the middle of a thousand bright blue bluebells, they grew every where. We all took armfuls home and still they multiplied and grew all subsequent years. Then came the developers and now they are rare to the point of having to protect and nurture them. I just don’t think this kind of habitat is around any more which is why I would love to recreate  a small part of it right here.
I have left links to all the sites where I have bought wild flowers, trees and nesting boxes. The picture is something I found online. It is a water colour painting called Bluebell Woods, Burnham Beeches; by someone called Rod Jones, on a site called ‘the Rod Jones Online Art Gallery’ This man has really captured the essence of the place. Oh I have always loved bluebell woods

Bluebell Woods
Location: Burnham Beeches
Medium: Watercolour

http://wossname.thingy.com/trees.htm

The Rod Jones Online Art gallery