Abberton Reservoir

Abberton Reservoir is a wetland site of international importance for wildfowl, a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Ramsar site. Run by the Essex Wildlife Trust, up to 40,000 ducks, swans and geese visit each year and it is home to skylarks, brown hares, common terns and goldeneye, to name but a few. The visitor centre provides fabulous views over the reservoir, excellent bird watching opportunities and a wide range of environmental education programmes.

To date we have sponsored a total of 18,000 trees, bushes and hedging plants at Abberton, including this winter alone, 3,075 trees and 625 woody shrubs such as oak, field maple, holly, crab apple, dogwood and hawthorn.

Our latest tranche of planting will join those trees we sponsored last year in the adjacent Church field, to create a nice large woodland area that will be linked with the rest of the site by hedgerows. Down at the western end, we have also just sponsored the planting of 3,200 hawthorn and blackthorn hedgerow plants, in the hope that once grown, it will protect larger birds like swans, by encouraging them to fly higher over the high voltage electricity pylons that cross the site.

Jo Wray, Senior Warden and Team Leader at Abberton says:

“Thanks to Brown & Carroll’s sponsorship, we are trying a new bio-degradable tree guard, which lasts 3-4 growing seasons and then starts to rot from the bottom up. This is going to be so much better as we won’t be left with thousands of plastic guards on the site, wondering what to do with them and how to dispose of them, so we are very grateful for that.”