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What would you do?
A small part of our back garden is woodland (and I mean small, I think it's a fragment of what was left - we have farmland behind now). It has been overgrown for a bit despite my best efforts and my mum finally (after a bit of pushing/getting permission) got a bloke in to trim the conifers, chop a tree down etc. My mum is very happy although me personally I think it looks a bit bare.
Does anyone have any ideas on what would be suitable to plant in the space behind the shed? I don't want anything that will get too big; also I'm not sure if bulbs would grow given that the soil might be compacted. Ideas much appreciated!
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Easy one for me, nice mixed native hedge from the shed to the back, dig a pond in the opened up area
There will I'm sure be more sensible less wildlife obsessed ideas to come. 
What a lovely little area - what my Pa would call a Spinney. I'd go for a hedge of hazels, a wildlife pond, some ferns, foxgloves, native English bluebells, primroses, snowdrops, native daffodils (narcissus pseudonarcissus) maybe some hellebores, ragged robin .... shall I carry on .... I could keep going for ages ....
That lot would virtually look after themselves
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I'd call it a spinney as well. We have a similar area just across the lane here. It's alongside the railway line which runs in a steep cutting and houses woodpeckers and Tawny owls along with a lot of other wildlife. One on the farm across the valley has human history from the Romans on. They were building a dam and an aqueduct there. Later a track ran through from Abbotsbury on the Dorset coast to the Benedictine Priory in the Park. WW2 saw American troops housed in there. I stand in the middle of it, looking through the trees and picturing all the activity in what is now just a quiet unused and neglected corner
Thanks, all of these ideas have given me much food for thought! Once the festivities are over (or possibly before), I'll go check on what the soil is like up there. I've never had the opportunity to more or less start from scratch anywhere in our garden so this will be interesting. I'm not sure what kind of tree it was that went (the one nearest to the front was top priority) but my Dad brought it when it was tiny and apparently he was meant to prune it ...
I'd grow veg, or better still, soft fruit, which will stand a bit of shade....
It looks a bit like a willow that was taken out? As pansyface suggested. I like the woodland idea with bulbs planted. Snowdrops, bluebells, Wood Anemone, foxgloves and some native hedge on the right. Lots of potential there
I haven't fully decided what to do yet (looking forward to it though!) but just to update, my mum says one of the trees was a willow - I think some of the ones we have left are silver birch, but I'm not very good at ID-ing trees
Funnily enough I was thinking about dogwood the other day, as my grandparents have some in their garden. Is it something you buy as a plant or seed?
Dogwood is best bought as a small tree/ shrub, but it also takes easily from cuttings, so if you want a few you can by one mother/stock plant and then increase your supplies by taking cuttings from that. Its latin name is cornus, if you want to do some googling