Fern Gate

Ferns, Bracken, Devil plants, whatever you want to call it, this stuff gets everywhere and chokes out everything else in its path. There are some nice bits on the Sanctuary where its mingled in with Gorse bushes that bloom with yellow slightly peach scented flowers in late spring, 2 metre high foxgloves and the odd tree, it has a bit of a Jurassic Park, lost world kind of feel to it, and it does look amazing.

But that's about as as far as my fondness for this plant goes, it spreads its spores into any adjacent land and in the hight of summer seems to grow about a metre a week and about as dense as Tesco on Christmas eve so the grass and the plethora of wild flower in the area dont even get a look in!

Although being one of the worlds more ancient plants you don't get to survive this long without adapting and using some sneaky tactics to kill off all your competitors, its a bit like the Amazon of the plant world just without rocket ships and same day delivery.

So what do we do about it, we cant use the land that's over run with it, its not good for animals to eat, its a breeding ground for ticks and its about a metre deep in old brown decaying ferns below the canopy so you cant walk through it easily.

There seem to be 3 options, Chemicals which don't really fit with the ethos of the sanctuary so that's straight off the list, burn it, now, the pyromaniac in me would love to wander up that hill with a jerry can and a box of matches but like many things in life I don't know what I'm doing and I don't want to be the sole cause of deforestation in North Wales in the middle of a heatwave. So that leaves us with manual removal via pulling, whacking, mowing or strimming.

While we let the main area of Bracken infestation bask in the glorious summer that we have been given this year, we have a smaller area that we have been trialing some intensive mowing on, and I can tell you its not easy, after getting rid of the initial layer of dead previous year build-up, its once a week mowing the area, but these things just keep coming and apparently will do for around 3 years, so I guess its just hard labour until they die off.

So while I'm out mowing the field have a look at this poorly edited video or our Fern selection.