The forest along the riverbank is a faint shadow of what it must once have been. Back in the nineties, I had a go at controlling the weeds; willow, alder, honeysuckle and wandering jew. It became clear pretty soon that getting rid of the weeds was one thing, keeping them out was another. It seemed to me that reinstating the natural forest that must have once been there was the way to go. It sounds so simple, get rid of the weeds, plant a forest.The first step was to survey a forest remnant down the road, record the type and number of trees and shrubs and copy that. That was the start. I have spent twenty years, looking over lots of forest remnants, collecting the seeds of trees, shrubs, climbers, scramblers, sedges and ground herbs all in order to plant a new forest. It seems that I am not the only one trying to plant a new forest so this is an attempt to share the knowledge as I collect seeds and plant a forest. So from time to time as I collect seeds I will pass the word around. I hope this blog is useful to anyone collecting seeds or propagating native plants but it may also be interesting to others planting stream, drain, river swamp or lake margins or in fact anyone interested in native trees shrubs and plants.There is nothing special about starting at this time, it is just that I have got around to it now.
