House with woodland

[BuildersBilly]

This may be a silly thing to worry about but one of the houses we are looking at has a patch of woodland at the bottom of the garden. The rest of the garden is lawn and patio and plenty big enough but is the woodland likely to be problematic in ways we haven't thought of?

Will it need maintenance? Could be a source of firewood which is a plus but we are city types with a courtyard garden at the moment so not sure if there are things we have not considered.

I know someone with woodland in their garden, it does require maintenance and trees fall in windy weather and need dealing with.

Def check it out with the estate agents as there will be legal guidelines.

all I know is that tree surgery is horribly expensive!

We have a small wood beside our house. It has a yearly survey by a tree surgeon who sometimes recommends work. The trees beside the road are trimmed. Other than that it isn't too much hassle although it does up the maintenance costs of the house.

firewood needs to be cut small enough for your woodburner and stacked to dry for two years. If it is natural woodland rather than some idiot planting trees too close (HS2 style) then it will need less maintenance and can be a nice shield against neighbours/roadbuilding etc.

and also against freeview signals if that is the direction of the transmitter...

We still buy wood for the log burner.
Our wood isn't coppiced and preparing wood for burning is a fair amount of work and as pp says it then has to dry out.

How much woodland? Do you mean a few acres or just a few trees? It sounds to me like a lot less work than a planted garden. An annual tree surgeon is much cheaper than a regular gardener.

We have a woods at the back of our house about 50m away, it’s lovely! But it belongs to the council and is designated a country park. I’ve never seen anyone maintaining it in 5 years though.

Are they protected in anyway - a woodland area can be subject to a Tree Preservation Order. This would mean that you would need to get permission from the Council before doing any non-emergency works each time.

What type of trees are they?

How close to the house/road/other buildings are they? What damage would be cause if one fell or lost a branch etc?

Oohhh.... are you in the Midlands op? I know a house for sale with woodland.
We steered clear of it for that reason, plus the fact its abit of a pointless space.

If you bought the house, would you own the woodland? We have a patch of woodland owned by the council with the lawned garden and patio plenty big enough; exactly how you describe the house you are looking to buy. The council have had the oaks on the patch trimmed previously but in general it is a wild bit land with about 4 oaks and a few ash trees in between. You will need a rake to clear the leaves in autumn.

We have a couple of trees in our garden and did have some conifers, we've had a tree surgeon a handful of times come and maintain our trees. It doesn't cost much for a pruning, ours a fruit trees so we don't want them too big. The tree surgeon also does emergency calls and gets rid of Christmas trees too.

If you're not worried about size you probably don't need regular maintenance unless there's an issue you want looked at. I'd love to have more trees.

We have a little bit of woodland at the end of our garden, it is actually shared between us and five other houses. It is lovely to have and has a preservation order on it so we are not actually allowed to do anything to it unless it is an emergency. In 4 years we have had one tree partially come down and dh and a couple of neighbours just went out and chopped bits off to make it safe.

You’d want to have an arborialist carry out a tree survey when you got your main structural survey done to make sure the trees were in good health and identify any likely costs you’d have in the first couple of years if you needed to have some felled. As previous poster says, tree surgery is not cheap!

We had a house with woodland, there was a covenant in the title which obliged us to have a biannual tree survey carried out and action any of the recommendations it made; we also had to have special liability insurance for any damage or injury caused to other people or property if any of the trees fell down - which they did, five of them in the five years we lived there although thankfully no serious damage caused, we just had the palaver of closing the road and getting council permission to divert traffic whilst we arranged for the fallen tree to be removed. I’ve had more enjoyable Saturdays.

It was nice to have in an ornamental way (we did use it for firewood, but we had a biomass boiler and got through several tonnes a month in winter, and it all had to be stacked and seasoned for two years before burning) but was really rather pointless.

Oooo replies thanks all.

We are going back on Friday for a second look. We had ruled this one out as there's LOADS of work to do but I think DH is coming around to it being worth the effort. House could be amazing but would need major work so it's a question of whether we have the energy and can put ourselves (and teenagers) through it.

It's not a huge area and it's part of the garden rather than communal but I think pretty much surrounded by other woods if that makes sense?

Good idea to ask agents what vendors have had to do in terms of maintenance.

I bloody love woods and am very excited at the prospect of having my own small bit.

@BuildersBilly

Oooo replies thanks all.

We are going back on Friday for a second look. We had ruled this one out as there's LOADS of work to do but I think DH is coming around to it being worth the effort. House could be amazing but would need major work so it's a question of whether we have the energy and can put ourselves (and teenagers) through it.

It's not a huge area and it's part of the garden rather than communal but I think pretty much surrounded by other woods if that makes sense?

Good idea to ask agents what vendors have had to do in terms of maintenance.

I bloody love woods and am very excited at the prospect of having my own small bit.

Ohhhh op, im desperate to know if its the house I am thinking of? Is it in the Midlands?

Sorry Hiccupiscal we are in Yorkshire.