The Habitat Restoration Co. was commissioned through the Woodland Trust to install approximately 250 metres of stock fencing across two fields at Carclew Barton, near Truro.
Carclew Barton is an organically managed mixed farm, with livestock forming an important part of the holding. Along the lower edge of the two fields sits an established population of mature oak trees which is beginning to do something particularly useful: expand naturally into the adjoining grassland.
Acorns from the existing trees are germinating beyond the current wooded edge, with young oak beginning to establish through the lower corners and margins of the fields.
The purpose of our work is simple — give those trees the space they need to continue.
Client Brief
The fields are currently grazed by sheep. While grazing remains an important part of the wider farm system, repeated browsing of young trees can prevent successful woodland regeneration by continually removing new shoots and foliage.
Rather than planting a new block of woodland and protecting hundreds of individually planted trees, the approach agreed by the landowner and Woodland Trust is to exclude livestock from the areas where natural regeneration is already occurring.
Our brief was therefore to install a new run of standard stock fencing across the lower sections of the two fields, separating approximately 250 metres of regenerating ground from the actively grazed pasture.
On paper, it is a relatively simple fencing contract. Ecologically, what happens behind that fence over the next few years is much more interesting.
THRC Solution
We are installing a robust agricultural stock fence designed to prevent sheep accessing the naturally regenerating margins while allowing the remainder of the fields to continue being managed and grazed normally.
No planting pattern has been imposed and no attempt has been made to decide exactly where the next generation of trees should grow.
Instead, the fence effectively creates the conditions for natural woodland expansion.
Existing mature oaks provide a local seed source. Where acorns successfully germinate, seedlings and saplings will now have a much greater opportunity to establish without repeated browsing from livestock. Government guidance similarly recognises that livestock and other browsing animals can severely damage young woodland and that excluding grazing can allow an understorey and developing woodland habitat to establish.
That should allow the existing hard woodland edge to become progressively less defined. Rather than moving immediately from mature trees into closely grazed grassland, there is an opportunity for a more varied transition to develop — young trees of different ages, rougher vegetation, scrub and open ground establishing together according to the conditions on the site.
It is a slower and less predictable process than conventional tree planting, but that is also part of its value. The developing habitat is responding to the existing seed source, soils, vegetation and microclimate rather than being created to a predetermined planting grid.
The Woodland Trust’s own guidance recognises the importance of protecting developing trees from significant browsing damage when allowing natural processes to establish new tree cover.
End Result
Once complete, the new fence will protect a developing band of naturally regenerating habitat across the bottom of both fields while leaving the productive grazing areas above them in use.
The real result will take longer to see.
If the existing regeneration continues successfully, young oak will gradually establish around and beyond the mature parent trees, allowing the wooded area to extend naturally into the field. Other locally occurring woody and ground vegetation may establish alongside it, increasing the structural variation between mature woodland and open pasture.
There is no requirement for every square metre behind the fence to become woodland. Patches of grassland, scrub, young trees and more established canopy can all form part of a varied woodland edge.
The work itself has also been a reminder of the conditions young trees are currently establishing in. Following the prolonged dry weather of 2026, the ground at Carclew Barton has been exceptionally hard, making the installation of substantial strainer posts considerably more demanding than under normal conditions.
Those same conditions reinforce the value of protecting regeneration that is already happening successfully on the site. Rather than starting again unnecessarily, the intervention here is simply to remove one of the pressures preventing those young trees from developing.
Sometimes habitat restoration means installing thousands of trees. On this project, it means installing 250 metres of fence and then giving nature the opportunity to do much of the rest.
