Kilcooley

Young hazel and ash trees are maturing, chaffinches and robins are singing, and butterflies are sunbathing in leafy glades at Kilcooley, just south of Bangor. Not in the housing estate, which is perhaps what springs to mind on hearing the name, but in Kilcooley Wood. This long narrow woodland is squeezed between the housing estate that shares its name, and the grounds of Clandeboye just across the Rathgael Road. The site, which runs to almost five acres, is roughly wedge shaped with the broadest end towards the north west, and is split into two sections by Drumhirk Drive.

The day I visited, the wood was quiet. I saw no-one, but I can imagine that at certain times it is busy with dog walkers, joggers, people taking shortcuts and primary school classes engaged in environmental studies - or perhaps someone just visiting to see how their tree is doing. For this is a community woodland, created by, and for, the local community.

The land is owned by Northern Ireland Housing Executive, which once maintained it as mown grass parkland. In a marked shift from this regime the Executive leased the land to the Woodland Trust in the late 1990s. With help from Millennium Commission funding the Trust planted the site as part of the Woods on your Doorstep initiative.

The trees planted a decade ago by local residents, pupils from Kilcooley Primary and the Girl Guide Association are now well established: the sweet chestnuts are producing sweet chestnuts, the oaks acorns and the rowan berries. There are also birch, willow, hazel, ash and pine trees, carefully grouped into areas where they will thrive best.

The two main entrances off Drumhirk Drive are each marked by a sculpture, celebrating further tree planting of 2004. The artwork tones well with the surroundings, appearing to the casual observer as upright sculpted pieces of teak-coloured wood. Closer inspection however, reveals that they are not wood at all but metal, and the brown colouration is in fact rust. I wonder if that’s what the sculptor intended. If so, then it was a touch of genius, to create something with the appearance appropriate for a woodland, yet more robust than thin wood.

At the south-eastern end of the site the ground becomes much damper. An overflow from Clandeboye Lake has helped create an area of wet woodland, a habitat which ecologists refer to as carr. It usually comprises willow and alder, two tree species that don’t mind their roots being wet. These conditions are ideal for spawning frogs and marginal plants such as marsh marigold.

Skirting around the wettest areas I stumbled across a clearing where several fallen trunks had been set out on the ground as seats. I found evidence of a camp fire - this is obviously where the local youths hang out. And why not? Provided they are not engaged in any illegal activity, or leave litter behind them, then I’m all for today’s youth swapping computer screens for nature. After all Kilcooley is a community woodland and the teenagers are part of the community. Maybe they planted some of the trees and feel that they have earned the right to be there. Or maybe I am barking up the wrong tree if you’ll excuse the pun - it could be the local pensioners who meet in Kilcooley Wood.

I suppose the primary schoolchildren who planted these trees are now secondary school age - that is the nature of such projects. Any young person planting an oak can follow its growth over successive years as they themselves grow older. But they will hardly see their tree as a magnificent centenarian, with spreading branches and furrowed bark harbouring countless insects. Only successive generations will get to enjoy that sight, in the same manner as we can derive pleasure from the efforts of previous ‘tree-planters’.

There are maps that show the existence of earlier woodland at Kilcooley, and indeed, there are a number of mature trees - I saw several large willows, along with signs of an old hedge boundary. The latter consisted of hawthorn and holly well covered with ivy, and the shelter and safety it afforded was being exploited by coal tits. They zipped from branch to branch, appearing and disappearing among the undergrowth, in their constant quest for food. Doubtless they are joined from time to time by birds coming in from the neighbouring mature woodlands of Clandeboye: rooks and jays, for example, venturing in to harvest acorns. With the passing years the range of species at Kilcooley will increase: warblers will sing from the maturing canopy, tree creepers will scour ageing trunks for insects, and mammals will lurk among its deepening shade. But for now, Kilcooley Wood provides a very pleasant walk in light, airy conditions, with plenty of sunlight filtering through the young foliage.