Within the next month or so the third phase of tree surgery will be carried out at Brundon Bridge, next to North Meadow Common.

The trees were identified as potentially hazardous by Babergh's tree officer and the charity, under "duty of care" needs to address this issue.

To our modern urban lifestyles, which have largely lost touch with traditional countryside management techniques and practices, the work will probably come as a shock. If left, however, these willow trees will succumb to windblow like all their tall neighbours in the adjacent plantation.

The trees by the bridge, however, would pull down phone lines and crush any cars parked in the vicinity and could possibly be of risk to life and limb.

These willows will be cut at approximately nine feet high to produce traditional pollards that are becoming an important feature of the Sudbury riverside. The informal car parking area will be cordoned off while work is carried out otherwise vehicles would be damaged.

Modern management favours high-lopped limbs, to produce a disfigured tree resembling the spread of a stag's antlers, instead of the traditional trunk or bole. In the past, pollard trees, depending on the species, provided essential timber and top-wood to meet a range of purposes from house building to hurdle-making and were essential to the economy.

With the invention of plastics, however, such trees were neglected and in the case of fast-growing willows, soon became overgrown and collapsed under the weight of their "unharvested" top growth. While Suffolk's hedgerows still retain many neglected slow-growing pollards, particularly oak and ash, few ancient willow pollards remain. A number can be seen downstream at Flatford, where artist Sir Alfred Munnings dug into his own pocket to ensure those magnificent specimens were managed. To this day a few huge gnarled sentinels of the riverside remain, providing a superb habitat full of hollows and fissures for a range of insects, birds, mammals and plants; effectively providing individual standing ecosystems in a pastoral landscape.

A century or so hence, providing there is continuity of management, Sudbury's own riverside pollards will provide equally beneficial habitats with, perhaps, elder and dog rose sprouting from their massive boles.

Following on from the very positive comments by Suffolk Wildlife Trust and Suffolk Biological Records Centre officers, a further 100 metres of ditches of dykes will be restored on the Sudbury Common Lands.

These areas will provide further suitable habitat for the typical wetland species which are far from common in this part of the county.

Tubular water dropwort is a key species that has benefited enormously from the trustees' conservation policy, set in place back in 1987.

Seeds of this species had probably survived until the restoration of ditches and dykes produced a more favourable environment for it.

Now it is very well established and is perhaps an indicator of the progress of the conservation policy and the slow but steady improvement of the Sudbury Common Lands and the wider riverside as a wildlife habitat in spite of increasing human pressures on those areas. Both the above schemes are grant aided by Natural England.