The work that we started in the car park in the autumn with the laying of the hedges has continued this week with Bertha and I preparing the newly exposed area near to the ticket machine bed so that we could start to plant it up with native woodland edge species. Bertha cleared all of the Blackthorn suckers last week that has sprung up in the cleared area and so it was quite an easy job to plant the pots of Foxgloves and Primroses and a few Teasels. We then dug over the rest of the bare earth area that had previously been shaded out by the huge Blackthorn clump that we took out on November and placed the old Elder stumps that we had saved in amongst the new plants to create extra habitat and to make it look more natural.
Who knows what flowers may appear now that the area has been turned... it will be exciting to see what happens over the coming months. We shall have to keep an eye on the Blackthorn suckers and a new woven fence that I shall be erecting next week should prevent anyone parking there in the future too!
The hedge itself is looking good with plenty of new buds bursting on theHawthorn and Blackthorn.
Meanwhile Peter has been tending to the front flower beds to spruce them up and Jamie, Ryan and their enthusiastic team of volunteers have today mown the meadow in the car park and removed all the trimmings and also given a haircut to the wild area between the centre and the bird feeders and it was certainly a case of many hands make light work!
They also re-barked the Toddlers Play Area by the Wildlife Garden and the whole area now smells sweetly of pine...
Howard Vaughan, Information Officer