The story of Ferry Wood
Ed and Carina at Ferry Wood
By Ed Tyler
With Ferry Wood, it was a case of love at first sight.
Carina and I had been married for 20 years and our move out to rural Scotland from Newcastle was proving a great success. Our son Peter was soon to be heading off to university, we were heading towards retirement and in need of a project. Our parents had left us a financial legacy, so we decided why not spend it on buying a woodland? We both loved working outside, were keen nature lovers, environmental activists, and experienced gardeners.
Initially, we thought of buying a Sitka spruce plantation and managing it using Continuous Cover principles, gradually converting it to native woodland. One day in 2015 the UK Woods for Sale site we subscribed to popped up with something very different – but what was particularly exciting was that we recognised the location. It was Ferry Wood on the Ardpatrick Estate, a 30-mile drive away.
We drove over to the site and were blown away by the setting, for it was situated near the mouth of West Loch Tarbert, with views out to Gigha, Islay, and Northern Ireland. The reason it’s called Ferry Wood is because up to the 1960s, there was a ferry plying between the shores of the West Loch.
The sale included a flat coastal meadow with a sandy beach. The wood was on hilly ground with impressive crags and cliffs formed by a mix of glacial and wave action. Mainly oak, but some hazel, ash, and willow with a scattering of old rowans. Promising, very promising.
But then we came across a solid wall of Rhododendron ponticum, and immediately I started to have second thoughts about the purchase. I knew that if we went ahead we’d feel duty-bound to get rid of this non-native invasive plant, and that would mean years of hard physical graft (we gardened organically and hated the idea of using herbicides).
Then I heard – on the other side of the wall – my friend Woody. We worked our way around the impenetrable stand and came across him and his mate hacking away at the shrubs with axes. I knew he had a contract to remove rhodos from a wood somewhere in Argyll, and he’d told me how fine the wood was and how much he enjoyed working there.
So, this was it.
Ferry Wood cabin
Afterward, mulling it over with Carina, we felt our encounter was a sign that we should buy the wood, for – impressed as we were by his commitment – we could tell he wasn’t physically going to be up for it much longer. We could be the ones to continue his legacy and complete the job.
And so we did, inheriting a management agreement with Scottish Natural Heritage (now NatureScot), enabling us to bring in Donald Kennedy and his team from Morvern, who taught us the Lever and Mulch Technique (the only effective eradication method not using glyphosate). As experienced gardeners, we quickly got the hang of it and shared it with our volunteers, taught it in workshops, and started making biochar with the resulting mass of brash.
After three seasons we were persuaded to apply to the Forestry Grant scheme to both tackle the remaining rhodos and erect a deer fence.
Today, in 2025, we’ve come on leaps and bounds. After nine years’ toil, the fence is up, the rhodo stands have gone and we’ve even moved house to be nearer (now only a mile or so away instead of 30 miles). There’s a lot of natural regeneration, particularly of birch and – since an incredible mast year in 2023 – oak. There’s also holly, which when we first saw it was only a few inches tall browsed into flat-like plates. There are still plenty of rhodo seedlings to pull out from the mossy banks, but of course, it’s nothing like having to tackle thousands of big shrubs.
We’re recording and monitoring all the bryophytes, lichens, ferns, flowering plants (including grasses), and fungi, plus some of the insects. We’ve helped found Action West Loch, a thriving local group of landowners and homeowners living along the shores of West Loch Tarbert who’ve come together to protect and restore the unique habitats (both terrestrial and marine) surrounding us. This has led to landowners in the area who own small pockets of rainforest joining forces with Forestry and Land Scotland to achieve restoration at the landscape scale.
It's great to feel part of a wider community of folk up and down the west coast, all of us up for the restoration of our temperate rainforest, whilst at the same time (as Carina is always reminding me) being able to do practical stuff in our little bit.
Follow our journey
Ferry Wood is becoming a monitoring site over the next year. Through the recent Rainforest Restoration Project launch, with partners including Argyll Countryside Trust, NatureScot, the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, the James Hutton Institute, and the Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest, Ferry Wood will be one of the temperate rainforest habitats monitored for epiphyte colonisation as the site recovers from rhododendron invasion.
For more information contact:
Ed Tyler and Carina Spink – Founders of Ferry Wood
Email: ferry_wood@yahoo.com
