GARDENING IN THE TRIANGLE

By Pippa.
The triangle herb bed needs caring for as it has a prime spot near the cafe entrance to the park and if you are sat having a coffee outside the cafe you certainly will be looking at it and now hopefully admiring it. Full of Forget-me-nots (Myosotis) it is looking rather colourful now.

Look out for another attractive flower at the moment, common self-heal (Prunella vulgaris). Though its soft pink/ purple colour is muted compared to Forget-me-not, it plays an important role in attracting pollinator insects. Watch carefully and see bees flying to the flowers.

The dead brown stalks are gone and the herbs will be on their way up shortly. The rosemary is doing well and I saw the cafe staff taking snips today which is great - fresh herbs for their lovely food menu. This work is down to a few FOMP members but anyone can join our 'gardening club'.

It's very rewarding to transform an area like this in a short time.

SPRING CLEAN TIME

28^th March 2019 and our planned Spring Clean in Mayow Park arrived. We were taking part in the annual one-month-long national campaign organised by the charity Keep Britain Tidy.   https://www.keepbritaintidy.org/

This community-led event aims to clean up litter from our streets, parks and beaches. In particular, we are all aware of the huge amount of publicity about single-use plastic, how it harms wildlife and makes an area feel unloved. For our event, our focus was only on Mayow Park.

Today’s event included our local Safer Neighbourhood team of police,  our park keeper and one of his colleagues, five pupils from year three of Our Lady and St Philip Neri primary school with their class teacher Mrs Moss as well as FOMP (Friends of Mayow Park) volunteers and a very well-behaved dog. The children met the police and held their litter picking sticks high to show they were keen to get to work.

Children with their litter sticks at the ready 

Our park-keeper spends just two days a week in our park but in those two days he can’t go into all the wooded areas of the park to clear up tiny pieces of plastic and dumped items. Today’s event was also aimed at helping him.

spreading out to seek out litter

Armed with our litter picks and big bin bags we all headed off .

The wooded space parallel to Mayow Road was full of rubbish including empty fast food containers, bottles, cans and general rubbish. Some of the spring-clean team stayed there for most of the morning, removing as much as they could.

into the woods

Others went into wooded areas around the park perimeter and along the meadow.

The children and their teacher did their pick-up mainly in the open spaces, which at first glance appeared relatively litter-free. Yet they managed to fill TWO large bin bags with rubbish. The children commented on how many Haribo sweet wrappers and empty packets they found. They had to leave us after roughly 45 minutes and return to school. Their help was invaluable.

When we all gathered together at the end of the clean-up we were surprised to see we had filled 15 bin bags with rubbish but we had not been able to recycle anything as most recyclables were ‘contaminated’,  meaning too dirty to put into recycling bins. The police, with their equipment, had also found two large knives which had been discarded in the woodland running alongside Mayow Road.

Not buried treasure!

Some of those involved in our event & bags of rubbish

Thank you to everyone who joined in today. The general feeling was that we had achieved much, collected a lot of rubbish and helped to clean up our much-loved park. At the same time it raised the question of why some people seem to feel it is OK to drop litter.

We are aiming to take part in the National Spring Clean again next year.

Time to sow

27^th March 2019 was a cool spring day, but a good day for sowing seeds. Twenty two children from a Reception class at a Sydenham primary school came with their teacher and their teaching assistant to Friends of Mayow Park and help us sow wild flower seeds in the mini meadow. The aim is to transform this semi-circular space into a colourful, pollinator-attracting wild flower display this summer and future years.

Scraping away the grass 

Wildflower seeds don’t like competition from grass so the children scratched the soil and pushed grasses aside which also helped to rake the soil to a crumbly texture.

The seed packs were opened so the children could see differing colours and shapes.  Colours ranged from light brown to dark brown, to black and grey. Some seeds were very small while others were larger and easier to pick out. They varied in shape too, some being round, others more oval.

Looking at seed shapes, size and colour 

Mixing the seeds with sand meant it was easier to see where they would be scattered. In pairs, the children took small handfuls of the sand/ seed mix and scattered their seeds in their chosen sowing spot.

Sowing seeds mixed with sand

 Watering the seeds was the final step.

Watering the seeds

This activity ended and the children returned to school. Well done all of you.

 It is so important for children to learn about the right conditions for plants to grow and practical activities such as this, in outdoor spaces, help them to understand in context.  The Friends of Mayow Park hope the children will visit through the spring and summer to see if their sowing efforts have been successful.

Over the coming weeks the seeds will be watered every evening by a volunteer unless there is rain.  With the right conditions, not too much rain, not too much drying heat from the sun, we should see the first shoots emerge by mid-April. 

damaged or dangerous trees

Sometimes large branches on the trees in the park break off and fall on the ground. This can happen unexpectedly, in particular with our veteran oaks and other older trees.  Sometimes a branch breaks but stays hanging awkwardly on the tree.
Lewisham Council is responsible for trees in its public parks, nature reserves, on pavements and roadside verges, in other green spaces that are maintained by Lewisham Council and trees on housing estates managed by Lewisham Homes.

Lewisham Council is not responsible for trees in private gardens, private roads or on red routes. For red routes report to Transport for London.

We've found out how to report a dangerous tree limb: Go to the Lewisham  website  below and you will be guided on how to report a problem with a tree in a public space.   <https://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/environment/trees/Pages/Report-tree-problems.aspx>

If you are reporting about a tree in Mayow Park you will need to include the address and postcode:
Mayow Park, Mayow Road SE26 4SS

AGM 26th JAN 2019

 You are invited to join FRIENDS OF MAYOW PARK (FOMP) for our ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

This will be held on Saturday 26th January 2019 from 10am to midday

Meet in the Bowls Green main cabin. 

The meeting will begin with a short review of 2018, reports and election of officers.

We will then discuss Green Flag award criteria as a minimum standard for all parks, management of our park, the need to improve the children’s playground and the important role of active volunteers.

FOMP members are all volunteers who care about Mayow Park. They work with Council and Glendale staff to strive for a welcoming and well-managed park. 

Do join our team to help improve our local park.

TREE DRESSING DECEMBER 2018

Article by Pippa Moss.

On Saturday 1st December we were faced with a very soggy morning for our tree dressing event and while we couldn’t quite face putting the gazebo up in the rain we didn’t want to cancel.

We would have had to have the storyteller Rich Sylvester in the bowling green huts but the weather actually got a bit better and we found a really sheltered spot near the bowling green with great tree coverage so we just based ourselves right there on the path and Rich made a dry den in the trees. 

Dry den for story telling. Photo Pippa

He did a few story sessions with some groups of all weather families and people did stop to write lovely messages on our fabric strips. Many were inspired by a great tree poem Alona had found with phrases such as ‘stress reliever, shelter for owls etc’. 

Poem found on Internet. Poet unnamed

We ended up dressing the yew tree behind us but also people walked down to the orchard to tie some up there too.

Of course it wasn’t as busy as usual in the park but it felt like we were saying thank you to the trees and that felt right to me - I get a lot from Mayow Park’s trees - there’s many a morning when I return from a rushed school run and look at the trees and just give a big sigh of ‘thanks for being here and looking lovely’. But they look a little less lovely in the winter so dressing them is a good idea!

Some decorative messages. Photo Alona

Tree message. Photo Pippa

Around midday, a talented local dog walker called Dave came along with his guitar and after a few cups of mulled wine it felt very normal to be having a fun sing-along next to the Bowling Green with confused runners trying to dodge through us!

Mulled wine time. Photo Pippa

Dave led a great sing-along on the theme of trees, accompanied by his guitar. He also included Christmas songs   Jingle Bells and White Christmas

                                                                         Photo: Alona

                                                                          Photo: Alona

Singing rounded off our tree dressing event     Photo: Sarah

Alona and I also gave an interview to Emma from CPRE who is filming and interviewing Friends groups. She said it was so nice to chat to people who were so smiley as they talked about their Friends group. I can’t think why on a wet Saturday in a park with a mulled wine inside me and poetic trees words buzzing in my head I wouldn’t be smiling??

APPLE DAY 2018

This article, by Pippa,  first appeared in Sydenham Society News, Winter 2018.

Mayow Park’s annual Apple Day on Saturday 6 October started fabulously – grey Autumnal weather, but visitors and passers-by soon arrived when they saw tasty apple slices being proffered to try.

We set up in the orchard (opposite the tennis courts) looking very festive and apple-themed. Sadly, we couldn’t offer any apples actually grown in the orchard – I wonder where they went? Hopefully into a nice crumble somewhere. However, there were plenty of different varieties to try (challenge: five are hidden in the wordsearch below), all available at your local greengrocer or supermarket!

As always in Mayow Park, a great feeling of community spirit and support surrounded the stall. Around 60 people stopped to say hi or join an activity. Rich Sylvester, the excellent storyteller who has joined us before, created a circus feel with his parachute tent tied up in a big tree, with lots of children sitting on rugs listening attentively. Rich used puppets and props to bring his stories to life, and the children added sound effects with sticks and singing.

At the stall, some children coloured in apples and took part in the apple and pear hunt around the orchard for a prize treat. Meanwhile, the grown-ups seemed delighted at the offer of a (free) warming cup of tea. Then it all got a bit soggy. Then really very wet, and it was time to abort. Like so many family camping trips it was a matter of trying to get everything quickly away into the dry. What hero volunteers we had, smiling through the lashing rain, not at all resentful about all those lovely blue sky days in the previous weeks. Great spirit and very British. And we do grow good apples (maybe because of the rain?).

Mayow Park’s next event is Tree Dressing on Saturday 1 December during National Tree Week. Based on an ancient custom that celebrates the life-giving properties of trees, we hope you will join us to decorate some of the wonderful trees in our park. For details of this event visit Friends of Mayow Park on Facebook or email friendsofmayowpark@ymail.com

R	Y	X	C	T	Y	L	N
C	U	O	P	N	P	R	G
J	X	C	X	R	U	K	A
O	R	N	S	B	K	X	L
T	Z	F	E	E	J	Z	A
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V	R	O	B	J	I	N	D
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Can you find the names of some apple varieties in this word search? Look for these:

Gala, Robjin, Russet, Cox, Braeburn

Our volunteers with apple varieties to taste

Our storyteller with audience