About the nature reserve

One nature reserve, a wide variety of habitats

The area is a haven for local wildlife, walkers and enironmentalists alike. A rich variety of plants grow on the scrublands - a legacy of the disused sewerage works.

Coppetts Wood is dominated by oak standards, but hornbeam hazel, sweet chestnut and horse chestnut are also present. The ponds on the site make an attractive habitat for breeding frogs and the wood attacts resident birs and mammals such as owls, finches, woodpeckers, thrushes, foxes, voles and shrews. Stretching for a green mile from Colney Hatch Lane N11 to the North Finchley Lido, this Local Nature Reserve sits in serene contrast to the North Circular thundering along its southern border.
 
Boasting some very different habitats, the nature reserve has five distinct sections:
Coppetts Wood, Scrublands and Coppetts Close Triangle
 
Accessible from:
  • Colney Hatch Lane,
  • The footbridge over the North Circular Road by Coppetts Close estate and
  • The Compton Leisure Centre playing fields.
The western end of the reserve is Ancient Woodland, and is where our popular annual Woodland Festival is held each May.
 
Wildlife habitats include:
  • Dry Grassland with herbs and ant hills;
  • Scrub with a huge variety of plants (herbs, shrubs, trees) - as a hugely important feeding and breeding ground for insects - butterflies, moths, grasshoppers, etc). Snails that are eaten by frogs, lizards, birds and small field voles - in turn eaten by foxes, owls, Kestrels and Sparrow-hawks. We also have damp scrubland favoured by mosses, ferns and fungi
  • Woodland with insects, birds and bats - in the leaf canopy a hundred feet up into the sky
  • There is also some wetland in the form of ponds and marshy ground. These are home to marsh plants, insects and crustacea that live in the water and are eaten by tadpoles and newts.
What a fantastic range of habitats - home to a huge number of wildlife More ...
 
The Green Link
 
Recently reclaimed from being a refuse site, the Green Link is on the western side of Coppetts Wood, and between the Compton Leisure Centre playing fields and the recycling centre.
 
It’s at its best in high summer, with an extraordinary density of flowering shrubs, alive with beetles, butterflies and small mammals.  
 
The Glebelands 
 
Immediately west of the Green link is the Glebelands.
This area of land is between Summers Lane and the North Circular Road.
The northern and central parts of the Glebelands are a sports field, two allotment sites and the Royal British Legion. 
The land to the south of the asphalt footpath is the Glebelands Local Nature Reserve and borders the North Circular Road.
This has the following habitats:
  1. Former Allotments on damp to wet ground, supporting grassland, brambles and Giant Horsetail, plus a number of allotment relics such as currant bushes, grape vines, plum trees and Fennel. Here anhills and foxes abound.
  2. A meadow of Scrub - bushes, grass and herbs.
  3. A number of hollows - water-filled permanent ponds, temporary ponds and damp hollows.
  4. Ancient Woodland
The Glebelands Local Nature Reserve has plants, insects and animals that have not been recorded anywhere else in the Borough of Barnet - or indeed anywhere else in London north of the river Thames.
 
 
 
A sycamore in Coppetts Wood. Note the ivy growing up it: while sycamores alone provide habitat for about 400 insect species, the ivy increases this dramatically, making birds and bats very happy.