Cutting a holly hedge and making habitat piles on the Styal Estate on Sun 9th May 2021

Twelve MNTVer's (including two newbies), volunteered to help Ranger Ceara cut a holly hedge, which was at the back of Styal Forest school, down to waist height. As there were a variety of waist heights amongst us!, and we were all working on different parts of the hedge to ensure social-distancing, four staffs were cut to the same length giving us a common 'waist height' whichever part of the hedge we were at.

Before......

.....during......

....and after! The cut hedge lets a lot more light in.

Once cut, the holly was dragged to a different part of the compound, where the side shoots were removed, larger trunks were kept to one side and the rest was cut down further to make compact and neat(ish) habitat piles

Cutting the holly branches to make the habitat pile compact.

We were lucky because there were tree trunk 'seats' we could sit on at break time, and again at lunchtime.

Lunchtime 

It was great to be able to get most of the job done(just a few larger trunks of holly left for a chainsaw to cut), and create lots of habitat piles. 

Also great to meet Ceara the Ranger, 2 new volunteers Kadie and Diane, and to catch up with other volunteering buddies that we might not have seen for a while:-)

Additional photo's by Adrian.