Making the Best of Things
We covered the reason for this forest cleanup project in a this post if you’d like to read more, but today it’s all about creating a functional path to access the forest to allow us to do that work. The removal of dead ash trees gave us all these logs and mulch to utilize in this project. If you’re in a similar situation talk to your arborist about leaving woodchips and logs on your property. I would certainly not have cut down healthy living trees for a path, but since these trees were at risk of falling already we chose to take them down to allow us to access our woods safely with the plan to ultimately create a woodland path with them.
A Path Through the Seasons
Just because you are traveling the same path doesn’t mean the view is the same. A garden evolves with the seasons and the years so this path takes on a different feel as the seasons change.
We had the trees cut down in late fall so our time to clean up started in early spring. Below you can see the progress and the view from one lookout spot on the path.
Some portions of the path curve, one portion had a maple we decided to widen the path to allow rolling carts through at this point rather than keeping it narrow and cutting down the living tree we shaped the path around it. From the house you can get a bird’s eye view of the path’s shape through the forest.
We selected the largest logs for the sides of the path, and for the smaller ones we created a wood storage area in a clearing and have a post on building a pallet wood hutch to store some of it.
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