More photos from our great session
Barrow full of wood chips |
Barrow with equipment |
wood chips ready to use |
Weeding |
And more weeding |
Established in 1993, the Friends of Mayow Park are people who are interested in and care about Mayow Park in the London Borough of Lewisham. Our members include dog walkers and joggers, parents,grandparents and carers with children, young people and retired people.
More photos from our great session
Barrow full of wood chips |
Barrow with equipment |
wood chips ready to use |
Weeding |
And more weeding |
Our orchard is a feature of the park and is cared for by some wonderful volunteers.
After our successful summer pruning workshop in August it was the end of September and time to show the trees some additional love. Our plan? to remove tree guards, carefully pull up weeds, add a thick layer of wood chip mulch and then replace the guards. Eight of us were ready for action.
Why bother with the tree guards as they are not high enough to keep out animals The guards are there to clearly mark out the tree space, to avoid mower damage.
With guards removed and set to one side it was easy to remove weeds- mainly couch grass, some brambles and wood avens (Latin name Geum urbanum)
Why bother to remove the weeds or unwanted plants? Surely they are not harming the trees? These plants, growing in the tree pits, compete with the trees for water and nutrients. We are happy to leave them to grow elsewhere in the orchard.
comfrey growing in our orchard (May 2024) |
One of the plum trees: Photos show tree pit full of weeds, guard removed and weeds removed, tree pit cleared, guard replaced.
received plenty of mulch |
So lucky this morning. Too much rain has fallen over the past few weeks- would we be able to hold this event? But Sunday 8th September was dry and warm.
Setting up: At 9 a.m the Glendale staff arrived to set up the 'ring' for the dog show, next to the tennis courts. Our team of volunteers were greeted with smiles.
The gazebo was set up and table prepared by some FOMP volunteers.
Table set up ready |
Registration: People arrived to register their dogs
Friends of Mayow Park (FOMP) have learned over the years to limit our publicity for our bat walks. so we can limit numbers up to a maximum of 50 people. We put posters on the four gates into Mayow Park and send an email to our mailing list. No social media publicity needed.
For our recent bat walk, we closed our bookings at 50 but we could easily have had many more. Maybe we should hold a extra bat walks in future - even if our expert 'bat man' can't lead them?Iain explains bat habits and behaviour |
After weeks of planning, scheming, emailing, designing posters, video meetings with our partner organisations, our team was ready for the picnic. This was the first Friends of Mayow Park (FOMP) picnic and we chose to locate in the orchard we planted in 2012. We wanted other park users to get to know this special place.
With
fingers crossed that the weather would be warm and dry Yogi, Mike and Alona
(not Viv as she was away on holiday) met
Rebel Kitchen (RK) and The Orchard Project (TOP) staff and volunteers to set up
our stalls.
Yes!
The weather turned out to be perfect for us.
RK
brought their own gazebo and plenty of freebies to give away including their
branded raw juices. With the picnic in mind they also brought plenty of picnic
mats for our anticipated guests. The mats were a hit with our visitors.
TOP
brought two apple peeling machines for the longest peel activity. They also
brought two amazing face-painting and body painting artists.
FOMP’s
orchard activities included Yogi’s
wonderful colours of nature art and a fruit tree hunt.
The
Mayow Park croquet club joined us and offered an opportunity to have a go at
croquet.
We
wanted to give people a chance to spend time in our orchard and discover the
diversity of our fruit trees while also having fun with RK’s Spin to Win game,
face painting and nature art.
During the course of the afternoon more than 80 people joined us, some staying and some drifting through, as well as quite a few children and some with dogs.
Thanks
also go to our loyal volunteers who came to help – Pippa posted photos on
social media, Robert brought his family and Freda came with her dog Freddy.
The photos below with thanks to Kath from The Orchard Project
exploring the orchard |
Team Orchard Project |
Spin to win |
This fantastic poster was designed for us by designers at Rebel Kitchen (RK). Meet some RK staff at the picnic.
The first orchard trees were planted in 2012. The parks department at Lewisham Council gave us permission for the site. The Orchard Project (TOP) came to help all the volunteers with demos and advice on how to plant the trees properly and after care. TOP colleagues will be joining us for the picnic so you can chat to them about fruit trees and their rewilding project.
You can also meet some of our Friends of Mayow Park volunteers who look after the orchard.
Join us for a relaxed afternoon among the fruit trees.