Millers Wood – the Story so far…. – John Stanton Photography

Its has always been a dream of mine to have quiet place to photograph our native Fauna & flora and in March this year (2015) I got the chance to purchase a small 3 acre plot in Handcross ,West Sussex.
I have been looking for around 3 years and with the money I had set aside dwindling away it came just in time.
Previous woods I had looked at where either too far from a main road or to dark in the winter months, so with a lot of work I have set about transforming the site.
Millers wood is classified as PAWS , plantation on ancient woodland and was coppiced (Sweet chestnut) about 30 years ago, all the ancient oaks where removed and the wood was planted with beech,oak and larch with a scattering of other trees such as Holly and the odd wild cherry.
The area had not been touched since and the local farmer was using the whole area as a shoot for pheasants.

MILLERS WOOD
MILLERS WOOD
Bluebells
MILLERS WOOD
Millers wood
Bluebells
MILLERS WOOD

The area I had earmarked for photography was heavily infested with Rhododendrons so the first task I had was to remove as many as I could.
Some of these Rhodies where 15 foot tall so as you can imagine took a while to remove, luckily some are short rooted so rip out quite easily and they burn really well once going.
The Rhodies took about 3 weeks to remove and then I got started on the wind blown trees,mostly tall larch, with the help of my new chainsaw.

The main purpose of the wood is try and get fantastic photo’s of our native birds,
so I set up a temporary feeding station, amazingly it took 2 days before any bird decided to use it.