News from the network: Roamers Wood
Roamers Wood is a community woodland located beside the Scottish Borders village of West Linton. It has been developed for the community by the charity Sustainable West Linton and District (SWLD), on land gifted to the charity on a 50-year lease. SWLD is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation community group founded in 2019. It was established to promote steps that the village and surrounding district could take as a community to become more environmentally sustainable.
SWLD’s vision for Roamers Wood is rooted in ecological restoration. Creating community woodlands enriches biodiversity, fosters environmental stewardship, and enhances mental and physical well-being through participation and recreation. Roamers Wood is beginning to accomplish this vision by providing wildlife-friendly habitats, introducing fruit-bearing trees and shrubs (for people and wildlife), undertaking carbon capture, creating walking trails and a beautiful natural habitat for community gatherings, and running educational initiatives for school and youth groups.
Work started in Roamers Wood in November 2022. Volunteers worked hard over many months planting thousands of trees and fruit bearing bushes and shrubs. Pathways have been created to give people access to all areas of the woodland site and a wide avenue has been left clear for people to walk through the centre of the woodland.
Various other projects with Roamers Wood volunteers have been developing. These include the setting up of a tree nursery at West Linton Primary School, where the children are helping grow trees from seed and tiny saplings. Another primary school and youth group project is ‘Soil My Pants!’ where cotton pants have been buried under flag markers in Roamers Wood. Every few months the children dig up the pants to see the biodegrading process, learning about healthy soil and the bacteria and fungi that eat the cotton. The more holes the healthier the soil! Roamers Wood is now a popular outdoor learning site for the primary school, with different groups going to the woodland for half a day of outdoor activities, including soil science, bug biology, arts and crafts, building bug hotels, tree and berry bush planting and sowing wildflower seeds. There is an art avenue where the children’s artwork on old slates have been hung on posts to create an outdoor art gallery for visitors to enjoy. Recent feedback from some of the children, said that these activities had been the highlight of their school year!
Edinburgh University are also using Roamers Wood for scientific research. Every month they are digging out small samples of soil and freeze drying them in special dryers to preserve the DNA of the microscopic life. They then extract the DNA using a chemical reaction and send the DNA for sequencing to read the DNA code. The sequences can be used, a bit like bar codes, to identify the different species of bacteria and fungi in each sample. They already have over a full calendar year of samples to analyse. They expect that as the different types of trees and shrubs grow, and more fallen leaves provide a richer layer of food on the ground, creating a more varied and diverse range of microbes in the soil samples. Undergraduate students from the University are also using the woodland for their fieldwork for their final year theses.
Last Autumn a Ceilidh Circle was built in Roamers Wood, with bench seating. It has been created for community use. The meeting place hosts musical performances and social gatherings. It is also used for outdoor learning activities with the primary school and other youth groups. Creative wooden signage is being added to the woodland, with QR codes that will link people to further information on the Roamers Wood website, which is currently being designed. So, there is a lot going on, if you go up in the woods today…
Follow Roamers Wood on Instagram -> https://www.instagram.com/roamerswood/
Photograph Credit - BoydWild