Pond for the orchard

 The Orchard Project and Froglife were keen that we enhance the orchard for wildlife by adding a pond. See The Orchard Project and Froglife here.

The plan was to create a small pond that would be part of the Blue Chain project which started in Spring 2024 and will continue for 3 years. 

With support from Eszter, Lewisham's Ecological Regeneration Manager, from Emily of Nature's Gym, and from Glendale managers, we agreed to locate the pond behind the orchard  to improve our developing wildlife area. Volunteers recently built a stag beetle loggery and there is a pile of felled trees from tree surgery last year. Together they form a clearing where previously it was a dense secondary woodland. 

Rose introduces the workday

The pond was built by a team of  ten hardworking volunteers on 20th March 2025, facilitated by Rose from Froglife and Lizzy from The Orchard Project. 

Lizzy planned this event to the last detail:  Underlay and pond liner had been purchased in advance.  The necessary tools were  provided. Sandwiches, snacks, hot and cold drinks arrived for lunch. 

Volunteers arrived. Everyone set to work to dig out the pond.

Work starts

Pond dug with shelving

Underlay and liner fitted carefully

The spoil dug out to make the pond was piled up to create a butterfly and bee bank, seeded with suitable wild flower seeds.

Butterfly and bee bank

What else? How to get water to fill the pond! There is no easily accessible water supply nearby but we overcame that problem thanks to support from a Glendale manager. (Glendale are the contractors who manage the park for Lewisham Council). 

We had arranged with a Glendale manager that a bowser of water would arrive when it was time to fill the pond. All went to plan. We will have to work out a water supply solution for the future.

Water supply to the pond

A final touch from volunteers was to roll a felled trunk down to the pond to create seating.

New seating for visitors to the pond

Some of the team

We were lucky with the weather, best described as wall-to-wall sunshine.

We received confirmation a few days later that our small pond will be part of the 100 London Blue Chain ponds project. 

Playground rebuild Nov-Dec 2023 part 1

 The suspense had been mounting. Six years after Friends of Mayow Park carried out our first online and face-to-face paper surveys on the children’s playground (started in 2017) , it looked like our dreams might actually happen.

2017 Summer: we started our survey designed to continue for months, no hurry, so we could reach more parents. Overwhelmingly, a new playground was the wish. Some of the equipment (swings in particular) had been there decades. The large wooden multi-climb  frame had arrived in the late 1990s and we estimated most of the other equipment came from that time too. High time the kids got quality equipment. Necessary repairs to some equipment were ongoing.

repairing the popular see-saw

What did parents want?

• Activities for toddlers including imaginative play, using sight, touch and sound
• Activities for those aged 5+ to play with friends
• Activities to challenge children up to the age of 11
• And activities should include balancing, climbing, swinging, pulling, sliding, sharing, twisting, jumping, a little bit of risk-taking, a sensory trail,  team-work, a space to sit on the grass, seating for adults.

What did the children want? They wanted more of the same sorts of equipment but better and more imaginative, with space to run around.

Clearly this was going to be an expensive ask. A group of parents came together to start the process but progress was so slow in those early stages that it seemed the project would flounder. One parent came forward willing to apply to big funders and made a start on applications. Quite impressive research went into applications and we had a quiet confidence of a  successful  outcome.

We were supported by Glendale, the firm that manages most of Lewisham’s parks. The Glendale managers wanted us to succeed, to be able to access funds. Lewisham’s parks department also gave advice and help.

But then came two years when everything stopped . . . and we all remember the effect that Covid 19 had on communities everywhere.

TIMELY TEAMWORK ON 12th JUNE

It was great to see Friends of Mayow Park (FOMP) volunteers and Glendale staff working together on 12^th June 2018 on a joint grounds maintenance project to improve part of the park. This work was not part of the usual maintenance routine but had been identified as work we could do together in  celebration of Mayow Park’s  140^th anniversary as a public park and Friends of Mayow Park’s quarter century as a park user group. On 1^st June1878 the Sydenham and Forest Hill Public Recreation Ground (later renamed as Mayow Park) was formally opened. Friends of Mayow Park (previously called Mayow Park Users’ Group) held their first meeting in April 1993.

AIMS

The aims of the joint Glendale and FOMP session were agreed:

• To clean up the Victorian drinking fountain
• To resurrect the rockery near the modern drinking fountain
• To tidy up and make more accessible the fruit and herb beds in the Triangle
• To thin out the maple suckers which form a lovely den around an old maple tree stump
• To prune the privet hedge and fruiting hedgerow where the aviary used to be, if time allowed

 VICTORIAN DRINKING FOUNTAIN:

The Victorian drinking fountain stands as a memorial to the Rev William Taylor Jones and a symbol of Victorian philanthropy. It remains an attractive ornament although the water supply through lead piping was blocked way back in a bygone age. If you look carefully you will see the filled-in holes from which water flowed. Hilary Jarrett, who was Chair of the Friends of Mayow Park in the early this millennium, looked into the possibility of restoring the fountain. However, expert advice warned that such a project would be immensely expensive and risk causing serious damage to the granite fountain. It was far better to keep the fountain as it is for it to remain an acknowledgment of the past.

Victorian fountain  in Mayow Park

The fountain called for a clean-up to celebrate its position in the park and that call was answered by Ian, with a bucket and long- handled brush.  

Ian arrives to spruce it up as a birthday treat

Job done. Fountain cleaned

We now have the modern drinking fountain, beside the rockery,  paid for by a grant to FOMP and installed by Glendale a few years ago, thanks to Hilary’s persistence in seeking funds.

THE ROCKERY:

Behind the modern drinking fountain stands a rockery. Every spring flowering bulbs grow in the rockery before the forest of elder, ivy, bindweed, overgrown holly and other plants take over. The rockery was revealed today when the team cut through the dense undergrowth. 

Where is the rockery?

Rockery uncovered and cleared of rubbish

Suitable rockery plants for shade were planted. These were sourced by Glendale, purchased by the Friends and planted by Glendale’s grounds maintenance staff and also acknowledge times past.

Rockery planted

. . . and more plants

FRUIT BED

Nearby, close to the modern drinking water fountain, the Friends tend fruit and herb beds. Today the fruit bed saw five volunteers hard at work. One started pruning the fruiting hedgerow on two sides of the bed. The others cut back the grass growing round the redcurrant bushes, the raspberry canes and the fruit trees, releasing these plants from hiding. The grass in the central space was also cut so that people can now bring their picnic mats and enjoy a less overlooked space. No photos of this at the moment.

MAPLE DEN

Directly opposite the fruit bed is a bench and a maple tree stump surrounded by maple stems which have suckered up to surround the stump and create a ‘den’ for children and adults to explore. The stump itself is a haven for invertebrates and possibly even elusive stag beetle larvae hiding deep in the dense wood. The suckered growth was overgrown and needed thinning, brambles growing through it and covering the ground.  

Den looking in - before clearing

Den from outside before clearing

So a team armed with loppers, saws and secateurs worked to thin back the maple growth and cut through the brambles. The work also revealed the variegated holly behind the maple stems.  Children and adults can now enter the den without scratching themselves on thorns.

Maple den after clearing

OLD AVIARY SITE

The site near the tennis courts, where the aviary used to be, is referred to as ‘the hard standing’. It has a privet hedge and a fruiting hedgerow. Glendale staff trimmed the privet which had become overgrown and straggly. The fruiting hedgerow was carefully pruned to leave the flowering wild roses which add colour  to the space and encourage insects.

Work in progress

Smile for the camera

Hedge trimmed

Hedgerow pruned

Roses in the hedgerow

THANKS

Thank you to the FOMP volunteers and  Glendale staff for a productive session and great team work. Our efforts were a fitting celebration of Mayow140 and FOMP 25.

Below are some photos of Glendale staff at work. Someone forgot to take photos of the  FOMP volunteers, but we were there - honest!

Upcoming work session in June 2018

 Friends of Mayow Park (FOMP) and Glendale (who manage the park on behalf of Lewisham Council) are getting ready for a joint working session on 12th June 2018 as a celebration event. Friends of Mayow Park first met in April 1993 (as Mayow Park Users' Group) and, for our 25 year anniversary, we would like to mark that occasion by working together with Glendale to brighten up one part of the park.

FOMP volunteers plan to clean up the Victorian granite water fountain in recognition that the park itself celebrates an anniversary - 140 years since it was officially opened to the public.

The fountain circa 1900 provided drinking water to park users

The fountain today as an ornamental reminder of bygone days

The volunteers will also tidy up the Triangle herb and fruit beds in front of the cafe. It there are enough volunteers we may do some additional work in the orchard.

Together with Glendale we will create a new rockery near the modern drinking fountain, an idea suggested by a park user a few years ago.

Somewhere in the undergrowth is a rockery waiting to be uncovered

Opposite the rockery and next to a bench is a wonderful maple 'den' created after a diseased maple tree had to be felled some years ago. The stump is still there but around it have grown suckers to create a dense hideaway. We intend to cut back some of this growth.

Dense growth surrounds the dead tree stump . . . 

. . . but in among the wood there is a great hiding place

And that is not all we plan to do.

We welcome more volunteers, for a short while or the whole session. If you can, bring a trowel or a spade. If you don't have tools we have a few.

TREE LOSES LIMB May 2017

Mayow Park has an impressive number of pollarded boundary oaks, planted between 250 and 300 years ago to mark field boundaries, before the existence of the public park we know today.

Boundary oaks indicate a once common farming practice to mark land and field boundaries in the same way as walls and fences.

Pollarding is a pruning method used for centuries to manage trees. The upper branches are removed when the tree is still young and in the case of these ancient boundary oaks they develop new upward-growing branches which over the centuries become as thick as mature trees and look like respectable tree trunks in their own right.

 Daniel Greenwood (from Sydenham Hill Wood, a stone’s throw from our park) has written about boundary and pollard oaks in nearby areas and you can read his fascinating article about some of the trees here:  https://danieljamesgreenwood.com/tag/boundary-oak-trees/

 So Mayow’s ancient oaks reflect past local land management, while providing habitats for a large number of flora and fauna today. Birds, small mammals and invertebrates make their homes in the hollows, fungi and mosses find somewhere to grow. The trees contribute to the character of the park and park users have often said that the Mayow trees are valued in making the park landscape so special.

When a lovely tree that has stood for centuries loses a major limb many of us express sadness, as happened to a pollarded oak in Mayow Park on 19^th May 2017. A local resident posted a photo to Friends of  Mayow Park Facebook group, thus alerting park users and the park maintenance team.

Tree alert. Photo by K Andreakou

The tree that lost a limb had the widest girth of any of the ancient trees in the park as measured on a tree walk in 2016.  Word quickly spread. Soon adults and children were seen clambering over the fallen limb and around its broad branches,  enjoying the opportunity to get close and personal.   A tree that probably few had noticed became a celebrity overnight. It was lovely to see how people engaged with the tree. But current concerns about health and safety, with the risk of someone falling and injuring themselves, was too great. Something had to be done.                                                                                                            

Clambering around a fallen tree

Heavy branches of the fallen limb hidden by dense foliage           
                                

Within a week a team of arboriculturalists from Sevenoaks arrived to make the broken limb ‘safe’. 

photo K Andreakou

Photo K Andreakou

Photo K Andreakou

These guys are clearly skilled at their job.  They explained their intention to leave most of the thicker branches on the ground to create wildlife habitats. Some of the thinner branches were taken to use as path edge markers along the woodchip path adjacent to the dawn redwood tree. Other branches were relocated by volunteers from Friends of  Mayow Park into a locked woodland nature area for wildlife, out of reach of human interference. And the thinner branches were shredded.

Broken limb still attached to parent tree by a small fragment of wood and bark

Concerns were raised by park users: maybe this tree is diseased because the heartwood of the broken limb was powdery brown sawdust? 

Powdery hollow heartwood

Without scientific knowledge about ancient oaks, I am inclined to the view that the collapsed limb may be due to old age, to the natural hollowing out of the inner trunk and to being a pollard with heavy limbs that lean out from the tree. I hope someone with greater knowledge can come forward to suggest some reasons for this fail. Meanwhile, the exposed inner core can provide a home to solitary bees, beetles and other invertebrates while the tree continues to live.

Looking around at other ancient oaks in Mayow Park, regular park users will recall that in July last year a mature oak split in two and needed urgent surgery. It now stands as a monolith tree where the whole crown was removed. Tree surgeons pruned it to remain standing as a monolith tree, allowing natural decay processes to continue for wildlife. Remarkably, it survives and has started producing new growth with side branches.

Not far from the monolith tree is the ‘lightning tree’. Hit by lightning a few decades ago, it lost most of its crown, thus exposing its hollow interior. It continues to survive, with growth only on one side of the trunk. 

These individual ancient trees contribute to the value of the park. Regular visitors recognise them, plants and animals colonise them and they recall land management history as pollarded and boundary oaks. 

(Photos by K Andreakou and A Sheridan)