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. 

Creating new wildlife habitats

 16th October 2024: Lizzy from The Orchard Project led our team of volunteers on a habitat creation journey in and around Mayow Park orchard on a fine, warm October day.

Tools at the ready in wheelbarrows

Photo AS

We were joined by young people from Free We Grow, who came ready to work. Under Lizzy's guidance the young people planted bulbs in the soil around the trees so that, come spring, we will have a lovely floral show.

Photo Mariana FWG

The children worked well as a team and some good conversations were had about what they were doing.

photo Mariana FGW

photo Mariana FWG

photo Mariana FWG

Meanwhile Friends of Mayow volunteers searched for wooden logs the thickness of an arm or slightly thicker. These logs were sawn to manageable lengths ready to create our stag beetle loggery.

Photo AS

Lizzy found the perfect location:  

Photo AS

Stag beetles are among a number of UK endangered invertebrates. Even though there are not huge numbers,  they seem to have settled in South East London where there find old, rotting logs to lay their eggs. Stag beetle larvae can spend up to seven years munching through logs half-buried in the ground. Then they pupate and emerge from their cosy woody homes into daylight.  And we find these royal insects flying around on warm evenings from late May into July as they search for mates, lay eggs and the cycle starts again.

With the logs ready, the two Mikes prepared the ground:

Photo AS

Their artistic creation:   

Photo AS

All finished: 

Photo AS

Habitat creation event 16th October 2024

 Here's our poster for the event 

Write-up of the event to follow.

More photos from orchard session in September

 More photos from our great session

Barrow full of wood chips

Barrow with equipment

wood chips ready to use

Weeding

And more weeding

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.

September 2024 dog show

 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

 Our poster: There were various categories and dog owners could register their dog for more than one category - see this poster. 

                                                                      

Registration: People arrived to register their dogs                                                                                         

Our helpers: Helpers wore our very own Friends of Mayow Park hi-viz tabards. One helper was particularly hard working: Can you spot them in the following photos?

                                                 

Let the show begin: Show time. So many wonderful dogs.

Our judge had a tough time deciding some of the winners.

This was the second year of the Friends of Mayow Park dog show. We've had requests for another show next year. Photos with thanks to Robert and to Pippa.

Bat walk 6th September 2024

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?

The weather on 6th September was true to forecast - rain and more rain. Bats don't like heavy rain! But it was warm so there should be plenty of flying insects for them to eat! Fortunately around 7.30 pm the rain stopped, just in time.

Iain introduced the walk with his usual humorous descriptions of bats, their behaviour and the echolocation sounds they make to help them navigate towards their food.

Iain explains bat habits and behaviour 

Iain lent out his bat detectors to groups of people and explained how to use them. First turn on the device, then set it to a frequency of around 50 kHz which would tune in to the sound of the local pipistrelle bats. When they are nearby we should hear a sound similar to a sloppy wet kiss - that's the sound of the bats. Look out for their fast and erratic flight, changing direction very quickly 

Quite a few children came on the walk, with torches at the ready and very good at handling their bat detectors. What delighted excitement when they heard AND saw the bats. 

Despite the light drizzle, there were plenty of insects to feed these amazing flying mammals. It was a magical evening.

Our participants were very generous with cash donations to Friends of Mayow Park and we raised £60 which will be split between FOMP and the Bat Conservation Trust:  https://www.bats.org.uk