Coppice planting planning

Say you were wanting to plant a new woodland to use mainly for firewood and had identified:

alder

ash

sycamore

sweet chestnut

robinia

eucalyptus (monoculture only)

hornbeam

hazel

to be planted in monoculture blocks and mixed blocks. Every year you harvest a monoculture block (or maybe two halves of different monoculture blocks) and a mixed block.

Look good?

What other species could you include, either to add diversity to the firewood crop or for any other benefit?

In the example below:

Brown - mixed species

Colours - monocultures

Grey - unplanted

White - hazel (primarily for wind/sight/access shield - is hazel the best for being a dense screen?)

The blocks are 50mx50m (0.25 hectares/0.6 acre) each. The hazel perimeter is 10m deep. Total area is 250mx250m (6.25 hectares/15 acres).

Feel free to add your own maps/planting plans for your woodland (real, planned or hypothetical).

Maybe cherry. Will it coppice?

Maybe cherry. Will it coppice?

Cherry does not coppice well. It does grow very quickly and will sucker and produce billions of self-sets from the abundant seeds. It has a lot of resin that will clog your saw and your chimney.

Alder prefers a very damp/boggy ground,

Sweet Chestnut will only grow well on an acid soil. I have a neutral soil and the couple of specimens that I planted 15 years ago are still not as tall as me.

Hazel produces excellent firewood and kindling but does not make a very god screen; hawthorn would be better. Perhaps an evergreen species would be best: Holm Oak possibly.

Robinia is an excellent timber species but beware the incredibly sharp spur-like thorns.

Be careful when planting that your mixtures are compatible: the growth rate and heavy leaf of Hornbeam and Cherry will shade out slower growing species.

Alder needs it wet but grey alder or italian alder are excellent and with global warming more suitable to british climate. Ash is going to die and hornbeam is pretty slow.

If its wet then one of the Salix family and if reasonably damp then poplar will get you the fastest firewood. Also some coniferous plants. I'd go for quite a range as with warming and increasing tree diseases, you want something to harvest!

A few years ago a guy at natural England came up with a what I what i think is a great idea. Hold a bunch of whips say 9 stand where you want to plant then throw them up in the air so they scatter, the results are great, no straight lines a natural looking woodland.

Thanks for responses so far.

I was originally thinking just get the fastest growing stuff and plant all that but considering ash dieback etc thought diversity might be best! I hadn't considered going with anything that wouldn't coppice but that would give me the option for a block of cherry (let the suckers grow instead of the stool?) and maybe even a block of softwood (which I know very little about). I'm all ears to other suggestions for the perimeter screen. At one extreme, leylandii would be a great screen but of no other use and brings maintenance and shading problems with it. Something that is 80% as effective as a screen but is more easily manageable and/or still usable for firewood would be great.

I'm aware of the short rotation coppice willows and poplars for mechanically-harvested biomass but that's not what I'm planning. Tell me more about using willow and poplar as conventional coppice and firewood though. They both have a pretty poor reputation as firewood as far as I am aware.

I'm not totally clear on how fast people are saying hornbeam grows.

Fast? Slow? Comparable with what?

As for aesthetics, I like straight lines, intensive management and high yields!

Italian alder is fast growing, coppices well and good timber. Grey alder nearly as good.

Hornbeam slow to get started but then good. Sweet chestnut not as fast but good. Hybrid poplar (Garver) or cricket bat willow or viminalis, grow very fast and although the wood isn't very calorific, it burns well when seasoned and dries quickly. Poplar will give you logs every 4 years, willow only slightly longer. Certainly second Robinia and cherry for logs. Birch is fast if open area, and don't forget hybrid Larch and other fast growing softwoods as they burn well, even if people don't much like buying them for logs.

How about some hazel coppice with standards.

No silver birch?

Some hardwood stands instead of all coppice?

Aslo conifers can be used as nurse trees

I would do some edible stuff like apple, crab apple, plum, damson, mullberry.

For a dense screen you need a hedge clipped i suppose, beech or hornbeam are good as keep leaves on all year...

Or maybe coppiced willow serveral rows thick?

In centre I reckon a circle of trees say oak or beech would look good. You Could have 4 avenues of trees leading to this with the coppice surrounding.

I would suggest planting all mixed, and throw in a few pollards too, just to give a bit more habitat! Dunno if anyone has heard the news story on the conservation report?

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