Author: Neil
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A good year for Holly Blues
The other day I counted four Holly Blue butterflies around the park. It doesn’t sound many. But it is. Most summers I am pleased to see one or two. This year they seem to be everywhere. A flash of blue rises from the brambles, another circles the holly before disappearing into the canopy, while a…
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The Queen of May
May Day is gathered together in Nowhere Wood. The guests are all assembled, having arrived in timely order, ready for the magical day. First to arrive was the wild garlic, clean and green with the freshness of a memory of good times around the family table. Then the first bluebell opened up to the sky,…
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Cuckoo flowers in the spring
Spring has arrived—but the world is not yet settled. In an uncertain climate, people choose uncertainty and so does the weather. Sun, rain, frost and wind – the persistent wind blowing through the meadows. Spring marches onwards, regardless. The cuckoo flower with its dainty lilac flowers hides in the unmown grass, shielded from the biting…
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The titmice of Nowhere Wood
[titmice is an old English name for birds of the Paridae family, including blue and great tits. It is also a term familiar to the American readers of these stories.] This is a bright and early sunlit story, chipper with the sounds of Spring: “Ti-ti-pu, ti-tipu….tsee-tsee-tsee”. The quick, little, sharp notes, ticking up from the…
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The badgers of Nowhere Wood – a February story
There are badgers in Nowhere Wood. For the first time, we think. This is their February story. Imagine living in a dark world shaped by scent, vibration and touch — where wind carries stories and the air itself guides you back to the mouth of your sett. A world of kinship and inherited ground. Of…
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The wise birds of Nowhere Wood
After dark, we can hear the tawny owls that live in the old oak by the pond, calling to each other, “tu-wit, tu-woo”. In the woods and hedges around the hamlet of Nowhere, where the ancient oaks keep their own counsel and the paths disappear at dusk into darkness, there is an old tree with…
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The mistletoe bough and New Year’s Eve
Some of the trees in Trendlewood Park play host to mistletoe, an ancient plant with mythological powers. Mistletoe is easiest to see in winter. when the trees have given up their leaves. When older trees stand bare against the low sky, mistletoe hangs in their branches like dark thoughts. From the ground it looks an…
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The shortest day in Nowhere Wood
On the shortest day, 21st December 2025, under heavy skies, the light arrived reluctantly, like a visitor creeping late into a church service, hoping to be unnoticed. It arrived in Nowhere Wood as a diffused light, fading the dark into a gloomy, dignified grey. The leaf litter lay sodden and heavy, mud tugging at every…
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The spring…
This is the first part of a two-part story in the sustainable park series of stories. First comes the summer rain, after weeks of drought. Then the wet drizzly, misty days, then the powerful storm from the bay of Biscay, and gradually the water table rises from its summer low. The ancient spring fills and…
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…. and the pond
This is the second part of a two-part story in the sustainable park series. Every year, the flow of the spring is rather erratic. In some winters it barely registers above ground, in other years it can flood the walkways and paths around the park. To reduce the risk of flooding, the Friends of Trendlewood…
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The tunnelling armies beneath carpets of gold
It is early November in the park, and carpets of fallen leaves are piling up across the earth in sodden heaps, driven by the autumn winds and rains. The browns of the oak, the sycamore ambers and the golds of the beeches. Beneath the old apple tree, the king of the orchard, fallen apples lie…
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Trick or treat?
A traveller on the pathways, weary after many miles of walking, looks up into the hedgerow and sees the silky feathery threads surrounding the dark fruits. The sight brings the traveller an uplifting joy, at least according to John Gerard in his 1597 herbal. He called it ‘travellers joy’. It has other names. It is…
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Celebrating mushroom season!
Everyone agrees, it is an outstanding mushroom season. The dry summer and the warm wet autumn have created the perfect conditions for these mysterious forms which spend most of their lives living underground. Quietly, but with ruthless effectiveness, they influence and shape the growth of the trees in the wood. But, what is a mushroom?…
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A different kind of woodpecker
If you look carefully at this image, you can see another woodpecker, but one that is quite different to the great spotted woodpecker that starred in our last story. This is a green woodpecker. Can you see why? These two kinds of woodpecker are able to live together all year round in…
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The end of the summer
Nowhere Wood has a weary silence, as the heat stifles its life. It is ready with its autumn plans, which cannot start until it rains. Rain, the life-giver. Yet in flood, rain is the also the destroyer. It is a question of balance. Is the balance changing in the wood? Is the balance changing in…
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Apples and the new year
Let’s travel back in time three hundred years or more, to the East End Farm, near the hamlet of Nowhere. East End farm has a few sheep and goats, some vegetables and several apple orchards. Tonight the orchards are surrounded by farm workers and villagers from Nowhere, all singing and banging pots and pans.…
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Hard hats, safety specs and camouflage jackets
It is a January morning, misty and still. The air hangs silently in Nowhere Wood. Suddenly close, but just out of sight, a loud and fast drumming shakes the stillness. Then a silent pause, followed by a quieter drumming coming from the other end of the wood. Let’s find the first drummer. He’s hard to…
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A spot for parks and town centres
The “fruit” of the London plane tree is actually a dense, ball-shaped cluster of individual fruits. These hang on long stalks, often in pairs, from the tree’s branches. The individual fruits are called achenes. Each achene contains a single seed. Attached to the base of each achene is a tuft of many thin, stiff, yellow-brown…
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What can eat a tree like this?
This story is about how a pair of tiny insects about 6mm long and their very hungry caterpillars can eat a large tree. Ash trees are beautiful: young trees have smooth grey bark, whilst older trees have bark that cracks to form diamond shapes, like the pattern we see on a chain-link fence. No one…
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The fairy ring
Just outside of Nowhere Wood, next to the school playing fields, you can, on a summer evening, sometimes see a fairy ring. The photograph shows parts of this fairy ring: sometimes you can find rings that form a perfect circle. How many fungi can you see here? There are about 15 mushrooms – the…