Sherwood, Frilford Heath SSSI, 4th May 2019
Eighteen of us turned up on a bright and sunny, albeit nippy, morning at the magnificent Sherwood House, Frilford, for today’s session led by James. The house has a large garden at the end of which is some woodland which has been designated a SSSI. We parked up in the driveway, unloaded our tools and James ran through the tasks that awaited us: mainly pulling up invasive Himalayan Balsam, and clearing fallen timber. After carrying our kit down the length of the garden (past the swimming pool!) we reached the woodland to find there wasn’t a huge amount of Himalayan Balsam in evidence, it being quite early in the growing season. There were plants that looked like it, but they didn’t have the three leaf whirl at the top, nor the watery hollow stems. For the Himalayan Balsam novices (such as the blogger here) it was also explained that HB is easily pulled from the ground. If it resists, that’s another sign it’s the wrong plant. So after some discussion it was decided we’d ret...