Bottoms of boots are disinfected before entry to Restormel Castle, at the centre of the Duchy of Cornwall estate. Around the ruined keep, moat sides are covered in flora typical of the narrow lanes, with primroses still flowering on the north-facing bank by the chapel tower. A steep path through bluebells and ferns leads to the valley, with the estate office, renovated farm buildings, holiday accommodation and the manor house overlooking parkland.
We are here as friends of a Herefordshire member of the Royal Forestry Society – this is one of the venues for its 2018 annual meeting. Beside the walled garden (which is about to be restored) the duchy’s head forester speaks of the trend towards triple accounting, valuing “natural capital” such as soil quality, shelter and landscape, so that social and environmental worth is measured alongside financial performance.
Across the River Fowey and the mainline railway we see a tall stand of western red cedar and another of Douglas fir with high pruned trunks. A newly planted hazel copse includes breeding platforms for the rare Cornish black bee, and a four-year-old plot of Canadian improved Douglas fir is under observation. Much of the estate’s larch has been felled because of Phytophthora ramorum and there is diversification of species away from monoculture to protect against disease. But conversion of larch plantations into less productive mixes of coniferous and broadleaved trees brings worries about future shortages of timber, which will become ever more essential if polluting plastics are to be replaced with bioplastic made from cellulose.
In the afternoon, footwear is again sprayed as we enter the Boconnoc estate, renowned for its ancient trees, 18th-century landscaping and woodland designated as a site of special scientific interest for its bryophytes (mosses and liverworts).
The estate’s forester describes laborious work over the past five years as thickets of Rhododendron ponticum (hosts for the larch disease) have been hacked out and destroyed using swing shovels, chainsaws, burning, spraying and cutting of regrowth. Now, on either side of the main drive, an expanse of heathland is re-establishing around the surviving trees, no longer smothered by that invasive shrub.
