Working Woods
Demonstrating sustainable forestry
85% of Ohio’s forests are privately owned.
Private landowners face a variety of challenges when it comes to successful land stewardship including succession planning, pests, disease, poor logging practices, pressure from logging companies, and invasive plants.
Working Woods at the Holden Arboretum addresses these challenges.
What is Working Woods?
The Working Woods Learning Forest is a 67-acre, nationally recognized, publicly accessible demonstration site at the Holden Arboretum. This forest integrates research and outreach to increase understanding of and promote best practices in forest management.
What is the purpose of Working Woods?
Working Woods seeks to empower people to manage, protect, and create resilient forests in Ohio.
Practices demonstrated and studied at Working Woods include:
Single Tree Selection Timber Harvest
A sustainable timber harvest emphasizes stand diversity and forest health while demonstrating potential economic benefit and sustainable resource investment for a landowner.
Premature or poorly done harvests often undercompensate the landowner and can lead to degraded forests.
12.5 acres of mature Beech-Maple second growth forest was harvested for timber in September 2019.
Demonstrating a good timber harvest and outcomes shows how a forest can produce economic benefit for landowners while remaining healthy and productive.
Timber Stand Improvement – Invasive Removal
The removal of nonnative woody species is a common forest management technique used to increase productivity, improve tree regeneration, the understory plant community, and wildlife habitat.
Target species included buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.), multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) and other nonnative shrubs and trees. Landowners who wish to treat invasives on their property can use the expertise found at Working Woods as reference.
Timber Stand Improvement – Improvement Cuts
Improvement Cuts are an example of a Timber Stand Improvement. Thinning makes more space/resources for the healthiest trees, letting them grow faster and healthier.
Unlike the Timber Harvest, no trees are extracted for an improvement cut: trees are felled or girdled, so that they contribute to the organic matter of the forest floor or provide habitat for wildlife.
Agroforestry and Non-Timber Forest Products
Agroforestry is a system of cultivation which integrates existing ecological conditions with production goals for human use. While timber management treatments exist at the center of the site, the edges of Working Woods present an opportunity to use agroforestry to demonstrate non-timber forest product (NTFP) cultivation.
The ecosystems of Working Woods provide opportunities for demonstrating everything from mushroom growing on logs, to maple syrup, to medicinal plant cultivation.
These agriculture-forestry integrations are growing in popularity amongst hobbyists and homesteaders and present an inspiring and engaging experience that contrasts conventional agriculture. Agroforestry practices also provide viable alternatives to tree harvesting for income to landowners. Agroforestry in Working Woods will be phased, growing as the Working Woods project grows and changes.
Ecological Restoration and Habitat Improvement
Intervention through restoration seeks to boost an ecosystem towards a further successional state so that a young forest can be off to a healthy start and become a more healthy, resilient, biodiverse system quicker than if no intervention occurred.
Working Woods offers a unique opportunity for Holden Forests & Gardens scientists, natural resource professionals, as well as university researchers and graduate students, to study the impact of different forest management techniques on anything from soil quality to native bat populations. Working Woods also operates as a living laboratory where people can investigate the impacts of climate change on woodlands, as well as how to help those woodlands evolve into older, healthier forest ecosystems. Learn more about the research happening at HF&G here.
Visiting Working Woods
- There are a few options if you would like to pay us a visit! The easiest way to experience the Woods is to come to our annual Field Day celebration, which is free and open to the public. This provides an opportunity to ask questions, connect with forestry professionals and other resources, and tour the demonstration areas. For updates about this and other events at the Woods, sign up for our mailing list here.
- We also offer free tours to forest landowners, forestry and natural resource professionals, or anyone else who might want to learn more about woodland management. If you would like to set up a tour, just send us an email at [email protected].
- Otherwise, any ticketed visitor to the Holden Arboretum can access Working Woods on foot (a little less than a mile from the visitor’s center).
Resources
Many forest landowners, stewards, and managers find themselves asking “what can… or should… I do with my woods?” We want to help! There are so many ways to ensure that both you and your woods are benefiting and thriving. Check out our Landowner Library for management tips and tools, and the Holden Seed bank and Working Woods Resource Hub for additional resources.
Want more information on the Arboretum’s Working Woods program?
Contact our team at [email protected]/
