Nature's Gym - helping wildlife: 2024

 31st October:

The north-eastern corner of Mayow Park is often ignored as a place to explore and to observe wild life. 

When new social housing was built recently outside the park but at the edge of this space Friends of Mayow Park and Lewisham's Nature's Gym saw the opportunity to enhance it for nature. A fallen oak lay alongside  the railings with Mayow Road - good  for wildlife and all kinds of invertebrates in particular. 

Too much bramble and cherry laurel had grown over the area in recent years. 

We needed to do far more to achieve our intention of turning this space into a nature reserve for wildlife to thrive and where people could visit.

Nature's Gym had already started to clear the scrub a few weeks ago.  But now we had two sessions to create a dead hedge, lay down a wood chip path and plant whips (young trees that are like small twigs)  to create a wildlife  hedgerow.

We had a pile of wood chippings from last year's Christmas trees - ideal for a path into the woods.

With two wheelbarrows to carry the wood chips into the nature area and willing volunteers it took no time to create a pathway.

  One wheel barrow emptied, ready to bring in another load of chippings.

While some volunteers cut back undergrowth, others made holes for wooden stakes to create a frame for the dead hedge.

We had a hand-held manual auger for digging holes, with its spiral drill cutting through the soil. Here we see the first hole being cut.

We needed more holes, to hold stakes in two parallel lines as a framework to hold the dead hedge in place.

Volunteers gathered the cut brambles, ivy, laurel and long branches. Then they laid them between the stakes to build the dead hedge.  

Using this method cuts the need to dispose of plant matter to a composting scheme. Organic matter slowly rots down in this space and will be topped up with more plant matter from time to time.

The dead hedge will also create a home for wildlife. It will provide shelter and food for all sorts of animals including invertebrates such as woodlice, caterpillars and beetles,  small mammals and some birds. It will be interesting to find out over time which creatures move in.

Here we can see the dead hedge between the stakes as plant material is being added.

7th November:

Today's aim was to plant many hedgerow whips along the periphery of the site. 

We needed to dig the ground to take the whips (no photo of the whips). 

Then the whips were planted  in a double row about 50 cm apart in each row. This close planting is so they will eventually form a thick hedge. This is a mixed hedge which includes rowan, hawthorn, blackthorn and even oak.

Each whip was watered and given some wood chip mulch to hold in the moisture.

Some of us will visit the hedgerow from time to time over the coming months and we hope it will thrive. 

Orchard care 25 September 2024

 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)

We intentionally planted comfrey, (Symphytum 'Bocking') as a mineral accumulator, and this plant stays in the soil .This variety is non-invasive. Comfrey's deep tap roots  absorb minerals and store these nutrients in their leaves. The theory is, if we chop up the comfrey leaves and drop them back on the ground, as the leaves die these nutrients return back to the top soil and  to the roots of the trees. We refer to this as 'chop and drop'.                             

Here are a few photos from our afternoon's work:

One of the plum trees: Photos show tree pit full of weeds, guard removed and weeds removed, tree pit cleared, guard replaced.

Weeding in progress

tree pit full of 'weeds'

Finished

Next our very vigorous Jupiter apple tree

received plenty of mulch

And finally Lizzy with a barrow load of mulch

We finished the session with refreshments (apple juice and Worcester apples) with thanks to Lizzy.