Environment Trustee, Chris Bull, gives us an update on the work of our Green team and Duke of Edinburgh volunteers, who are in action on Saturday mornings and some Thursday evenings.
The “painting the Forth Bridge” metaphor is not entirely appropriate to keeping all our grounds in good order, as we never seem to have all jobs/sites cleared! And that is even with the addition of ‘No Mow May’, ‘Let It Bloom June’ and ‘Knee High July’ to our Environment Policy.
This year’s weather has seen unprecedented amounts of overgrowth, not just for us but everywhere; on road verges, lanes and hedging. This last quarter has only seen one need for watering, by the Thursday DofE group on Falkland Road’s hedging on the roadside bund but, goodness, has stuff continued to grow!
Most of our work, which is greatly aided by the record number of corporate volunteering sessions, has been cutting back overgrowth and even more overgrowth. We have had four sessions along Tamworth Road and more along Gallows Reach and Gallows Wharf, with bund cutting and mowing along Falkland Road.
We are fortunate to have adult volunteers with the strength and skills to use the big DR Mower and the big strimmers (thanks to Philip, Sean and Nigel), as the power tools are so much faster than just manual lopping and shearing. Paul Brettell and Peter Buck have also now trained three additional DofE volunteers, who opted for training to use the big strimmers.
It is always so much more satisfying to add to biodiversity and I am delighted to report that we had a session planting bluebell bulbs (English of course) in the woodland at Darnford Moors. The ground was very hard so it was far from easy but hopefully we will see the benefit, if not in Spring 2024 but certainly in Spring 2025 (they don’t always come up in the first year).
In that same session some of the work party also tidied the deadhedging and path ways and created some new path edging with offcut branches. We very much hope that in the next few months we will have chipped wood from another site to lay down in the pathways there.
As always, our volunteers (young and a bit older) are vital and I thank every one of them. Always tricky naming names, but with the huge number of CSR sessions this summer season Paul Brettell has done an amazing job, with invaluable help from regular Grounds Team adults Philip Skelton, Sean O’Brien, Margaret Broadhead and Teri Dicken.
