| Sladden Wood | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Nature reserve |
| Location | Alkham, Kent |
| OS grid | TR 257 428 |
| Area | 7 hectares (17 acres) |
| Managed by | Kent Wildlife Trust |
Sladden Wood is a 7-hectare (17-acre) nature reserve north of Alkham in Kent. It is managed by the Kent Wildlife Trust. [1]
Alkham is a village and civil parish in the Dover district of Kent, England, about five miles west of Dover. Within the parish are the settlements of Chalksole and Ewell Minnis; the parish population was 691 people, reducing slightly to 688 at the 2011 Census.
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south west. The county also shares borders with Essex along the estuary of the River Thames, and with the French department of Pas-de-Calais through the Channel Tunnel. The county town is Maidstone.
Kent Wildlife Trust (KWT) is a conservation charity in the United Kingdom that was founded in 1958, previously known as the Kent Trust for Nature Conservation. It aims to "work with people to restore, save and improve our natural spaces" and to "ensure that 30% of Kent and Medway - land and sea - is managed to create a healthy place for wildlife to flourish". In 2016 it had thirty-one thousand members and an annual income of £4 million. KWT manages fifty-four nature reserves, of which twenty-four are Sites of Special Scientific Interest, two are National Nature Reserves, nine are Nature Conservation Review sites, seven are Special Areas of Conservation, three are Special Protection Areas, seven are Local Nature Reserves, one is a Geological Conservation Review site, thirteen are in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and one is a Scheduled Monument.
The main trees in this wood are hornbeam, field maple and hazel, and there are ground flora such as green hellebore and yellow archangel. [1]
Carpinus betulus, commonly known as the European or common hornbeam, is a hornbeam native to Western Asia and central, eastern, and southern Europe, including southern England. It requires a warm climate for good growth, and occurs only at elevations up to 600 metres (1,969 ft). It grows in mixed stands with oak, and in some areas beech, and is also a common tree in scree forests. Hornbeam was also known as 'Yoke Elm'.
Corylus avellana, the common hazel, is a species of hazel native to Europe and western Asia, from the British Isles south to Iberia, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, north to central Scandinavia, and east to the central Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and northwestern Iran. It is an important component of the hedgerows that were the traditional field boundaries in lowland England. The wood was traditionally grown as coppice, the poles cut being used for wattle-and-daub building and agricultural fencing.
There is access by a footpath from Alkham.
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sladden Wood . |
