How the day to day work of Michael Danks, Assistant Forester on Ashridge, changes through out the year

Being a forester means my daily work changes with the seasons and the weather.

During the winter months I am very busy with everyone else in the forestry team clearing woodland tracks, bridle-ways and footpaths. This enhances the habitat and keeps the rights of way open for the public, as well as allowing us access to the estate with our vehicles. Any damage caused to the forest floor by this work is repaired in spring by ‘discing’ - smoothing out the ruts and then rolling. Winter is the time when we do our planting and formative pruning of the young trees that had been planted in previous years.

We operate an estate sawmill, where we produce a small amount of timber for the estate. This is very unusual for National Trust estates. Our woods are managed in a sustainable way and we extract timber from these areas. It is then transported back to the mill on our timber trailer and then is processed for the estate's needs. Our timber can end up as posts or rail fencing or gate posts. It is also produced for the regional building department. We mill hardwoods including oak and sweet chestnut. Softwoods we mill include European Larch and various pine.

Tree inspection is done in the early spring, as the light in the autumn isn't good enough for looking into the crown and seeing possible defects.

In the spring and summer months we look after the young trees by mowing the grass and spraying off the competition so that they can put on a large amount of growth. These trees are in large ‘boxes’ - fenced enclosures - and were planted for a variety of different reasons: to create parkland trees, shelter-belts and re-establish formal ride edges from Ashridge House.

A mowing regime is in place over the spring, summer and autumn months with roadside verges being cut with a side-arm flail, sometimes up to four times a year depending on the growing season. We also cut car parks and woodland rides. Towards the end of the season we are out cutting large areas of bracken on the open commons to promote grass growth and in October the habitat set aside, at the end of the ground nesting birds season.

Autumn is a time when we do an inspection for fungi in and around trees. This help us find potentially dangerous trees that have to be felled for public safety.

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