….it’s starting to come good.

We have reds, blues, pinks, yellows, whites, and purples in our mini-meadow, and a fantastic backdrop in the distance. All this colour will be the annuals in the seed-mix with the perennials taking over in the second year.

It was worth all the hard work!! 

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A good weekender with Tim, Marcus, Phil, Sharon, Aaron and myself pitching in, and plenty of people using the path to run, walk or cycle.

In my excitement, I forgot to take a “team-photo” around the bench. Plenty of them on previous blogs though.

The other meadow areas are a little behind this one. Probably not enough direct sunlight, but we are all taking note and making plans to adjust in the autumn

We made a tentative path down to the reed-bed.

This just allows us to get down there and see what is what. In the autumn we want to clear out the stream and really help the reeds to flourish. We can then see what wildlife this brings in.

Wildlife and wildflowers spotted: 

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The wildflower bit is not for everyone, which is why there is plenty of other stuff to do.

And sometimes it’s just good to get away from time on a screen and enjoy a bit of green time.

Plans that we are formulating going forwards: I have storage for wild-bird food. We just need to make the feeders squirrel-proof now. We need to clear a load of ivy from the Drummond Road entrance moving south. We need to move a line of trees from between the underpass and the Drummond Road entrance and plant them into a hedge. We need to work on our hedge at bench #3 and get a lot more sunlight onto the ground. We need to harvest the seed from our wildflowers and extend our meadows on each side but retain a bank of scrub at the back. We need more sunlight at bench #2. At the moment it is damp and cold. We need a circle of logs (for seating) at various points from Berrybanks to where the bridleway crosses – probably about three in total. Personally, I would like to clear the area where the bridleway crosses the path and encourage the bluebells to spread, whilst planting some wild daffodils – this area reminds me so much of Edmund and I would like to keep it that way. We need to clear out the bird-boxes and modify the bat-boxes.

Most of this work will become our winter works program, but now is the time to be thinking about what needs doing and planning it in.

Great to see our work from last winter starting to pay off.

Paul