Tree Maintenance at Caldicot Country Park

In order to keep Caldicot Country Park an enjoyable and a safe place for you to walk, you may have noticed that we are currently doing work on some of our trees in our beautiful park. Don’t worry, this is all timed to avoid the bird nesting season and the trees have all been assessed for bat roosts (but none have been found). We won’t be long finishing this work, so please bear with us.

Here’s why we are doing, what we are doing…

• An increase in pressure from footfall and more frequent flooding has placed a lot of stress on some of our trees, and their health is now starting to suffer. Some of the trees we are working on have become a safety risk with branches, and in some cases, whole trees starting to fail.

• As the canopies of trees planted close together are co-dependent, changes in one tree can affect the life of another. So when we need to carry out essential tree work of this nature, we tend to do so in groups of trees rather than individually. This is why we have currently cordoned off a large area of the avenue in the park.

• A lot of these trees that you can see along our avenue today, were first planted at the same time almost 150 years ago, which means that inevitably, they will all start to decline at the same time many years later. This time is now, so for us to ensure that the avenue retains its special value as an important habitat and landscape, we are adopting a phased approach to replacing trees rather than waiting for major failures to occur. We do this through a programme of selective tree removal to create gaps for replanting, and some careful pruning of other trees to reduce the risk of any failure. This all helps prolong their life and the special nature of the avenue.

• Any new trees that we plant may be of a different species to the ones they are replacing. This will improve resilience against tree diseases, and help manage any stresses that may emerge in our country park in the future.

Thank you for your understanding and for helping to look after our country park so that future generations can enjoy it too.