Clearing Land of Brambles, Broom and Gorse
03 February 2025
Sometimes, I feel like there is not a day of my life that goes by where I am not cutting back brambles, broom or gorse. By now, we are almost veteran land clearers. We do not have a tractor with a fancy attachment, so it all has been done by hand and as such, we have learnt a lot about how to make it easier for ourselves as we’ve went along.
You will hear from most people who own some amount of land in Portugal, that they have a problem with one invasive species or another. For some this is fast growing mimosa trees, for others, their land is overrun by eucalyptus, and for us the problem is the broom and gorse. The problem with these species on your land only becomes apparent during summertime, when the risk of forest fires escalates. As the likes of mimosa and eucalyptus aren’t native, they suck the land dry and do not provide the space for native vegetation to grow and thrive. This results in an unbalanced ecosystem that a fire will spread through rapidly – scary stuff! What we really want is for native species to thrive such as oak, chestnut and hazel, which will add to the landscape and not take from it. We want to encourage biodiversity and all the wildlife that it provides a home for.
About half of our land is forested with, from what we can see, mostly oak trees. The problem we have surrounding many of the oaks is masses of brambles engulfing the bottom of them and climbing the whole way up. The second problem we have is prolific broom and gorse bushes on the higher parts of our land. These bushes are highly flammable and unfortunately mostly border our property. From speaking with our neighbours, we discovered that this wasn’t always the case. Where the broom bushes now line our hills, there was once mostly oak trees that were destroyed in a fire around 10 years ago. Evidence of the fire quickly became apparent, as we found burnt water pipes and trees with burn damage at their bases shortly after arriving here. Following the fire, the vegetation was forced to start again, which meant the broom and gorse have now taken over, as they grow fast and in poor quality soils.
So little by little, we have been attempting to clear away the broom, gorse and brambles to not only open up undiscovered areas of our land, but also to help protect it from the risk of forest fires during the summer. I remember how ill-prepared we were the first time we faced a big bramble mound to try to remove the lid to the water well on our land. I was wearing a summer dress and welly boots, and we were equipped only with hand pruners. After hearing somewhere that welding gloves stop the brambles sticking through your hands (they don’t!), we had a pair of these each to help pull the brambles away. We made very slow progress, and the result of trying to pull the brambles with a rake was legs and arms covered in scratches. Brambles 1 – Dani/Will 0!
Due to the sheer amount of broom we need to clear, you may ask, have you never considered getting a tractor in for a few days to help. We have, however, the areas where they are growing are very hilly and also very close to old stone walls and trees that we don’t want getting damaged in the process. In short, access would make clearing this neatly with a tractor pretty difficult. Sure, there are areas that could be cleared more easily than others, but for now we are doing it by hand and working on the areas closest to our home and access roads outwards. We know we will get there eventually.
Now, with over one year’s experience of clearing some sort of unwanted spikey vegetation of some sort each day, we have the process more or less nailed. Our ultimate clearing kit consists of tough leather garden gloves (worn over a pair of regular work gloves), the trusty battery powered reciprocating saw and hand pruners. Areas with large amount of brambles, without big bits of wood or wire in the middle, can be tackled with the strimmer with a blade attached. Sometimes it can be slow and laborious work, but we never get tired of seeing areas open up and knowing that we have helped make our land a little more fire safe. Of course, we have also learnt the hard way that the best time for clearing is definitely winter. Not only is it a lot more cooler and more comfortable to work in during winter, it’s easier to see what needs cut back as most of the deciduous trees which we want to keep have lost their leaves. Furthermore, on getting a burn permit, we can easily get rid of all the things we have cut back, something that is not permitted during the summer months.
So, it may not be the world’s most exciting thing, but we have nearly mastered how to clear our land and forests of the invasive species. It is something we have to spend a lot of time doing but that we will eventually get on top of. We would love to get some livestock in the future to help with preventing too much regrowth.
