Please, don’t do handbrake turns in our car park!
Continue reading “Handbrake turns”Handbrake turns
New fencing at Puddle Corner.
Continue readingNo bridges, please.
Planning application 18/10035/OUT
Above is the Parameter Plan submitted by RPS with planning application 18/10035/OUT. If you look carefully, there are two grey dotted lines that run from the red site boundary, over the Lambrok Stream, and into the park. Right at the bottom of the key, they are labelled potential foot/cycle links and we assume that a foot/cycle link that crosses the Lambrok will do so on a bridge.
Continue reading “No bridges, please.”Planting whips in the car park
From Wikipedia:
A whip is a slender, unbranched shoot or plant. This term is used in forestry to refer to unbranched young tree seedlings of approximately 0.5-1.0 m (1 ft 7 in-3 ft 3 in) in height and 2–3 years old, that have been grown for planting out.
Thanks!
Over the weekend, the grass was cut and baled in all the park’s fields except Village Green. Unfortunately, in Cornfield, the fence around the Lone Oak was damaged by the farm machinery as it turned.
Continue reading “Thanks!”
A Walk In The Park
by Ian Bushell
I had a quick wander round the park this afternoon to see what needs doing, to assess the ragwort situation in the fields, and look at the tree damage done by the wind. There were three Roe Deer under the Owl Oak in the Church Lane field across the Lambrok, where they are planning to build houses..
Continue readingLitter Pickers Inc.
Newspapers, online and off, have been bombarding us with headlines like this one from the Guardian:
Littering epidemic in England
We would just like to say: Not in our park, there isn’t; our park is pristine. Our park goers pick up their litter (and often other people’s litter as well) and put it in the bins.
Thank you.
Pictures by DKG
Ragwort
Ragwort is extraordinarily successful; all the “injurious weeds” named in the 1959 Weed Act are.
Continue reading “Ragwort”
Wasp woodwork
Wasps have stripped wood from the fence in the picnic area, leaving light-coloured lines on the weathered grey boards. All British social wasps make their nests out of paper and they make the paper out of wood fibres and saliva.
Continue readingResurfacing the car park
You may have noticed the enormous heap of road-planings that spent a while in the far corner of the car park taking up several parking spaces.
Last week they were used to resurface the main car park, to establish a paved track through the bottom of the Arboretum where the rubbish lorry turns, and to fill some of our muddiest patches.
The car park had to be closed for a few days because the weather was too hot for the planings to harden properly. Thank you for your patience.
Hopefully, the new surface will see us safely through the coming winter.
Contractor Terry Shepherd mending the fence around the Lone Oak.
Continue readingHimalayan balsam
We keep constant watch in the park for the invasive alien, Impatiens glandulifera, or Himalayan balsam. It might be very beautiful to look at but it is an environmental horror story
Continue reading “Himalayan balsam”
New bins!
A dozen new rubbish bins have been installed in the park.
Continue reading “New bins!”Metal detectors
Wiltshire Council policy on metal detecting
Wiltshire Council does not allow metal detecting by the public on land it owns for the following reasons:
- Much of the countryside owned by Wiltshire Council is let to third parties, usually for agriculture
- Were metal detecting/digging by permit allowed in public open spaces it may encourage non-permit holders to detect or dig
- The council could be left with diggings and unfilled hollows making it unsafe for livestock, farm machinery and, if on public open space, the public
- There could be damage to sites and features of interest, including archaeology, vegetation and wildlife habitats.
Somewhere between fifty and sixty teenagers gathered in the park, under the Lone Oak, yesterday evening, to celebrate somebody’s fifteenth birthday. It’s hard to imagine how such an event could not have ended badly.
Continue readingWho is doing this?
We have been sent pictures this afternoon of newly damaged goat willow trees in Sleepers Field. Who is doing this?
Who is it spending their lockdown time climbing into our trees with a sharp blade? If you know anything about this, please report it.
UPDATE: On closer inspection this looks as if it may be squirrel damage. We apologise to the Village Green Vandals for jumping to conclusions. We have sent the photographs to our Tree Officer.
Our email address is friedsofscp@outlook.com
PCSO Mat Till’s email address is Matthew.Till@wiltshire.pnn.police.uk.
Mat is a member of Community Policing Team 1, which can be contacted on 101 ext 36337 or on 07471029309.
National Insect Week – Day 4
Butterfly Transect
Mon 22/06/2020 13:05
Mail to Mike Fuller, County Butterfly Recorder, from Ian Bushell
Mike,
Attached is the latest transect at Southwick Country Park – the Meadow Brown numbers are if anything an underestimate. The warm May, lower footfall in the park, plus the fact that the hay/silage crop had not been taken could well have contributed to the general increased numbers.
Cheers
Ian
Vandalism in Village Green
The teenagers who burned the ash poles in the western corner of Village Green have taken to snapping off trees.
Continue reading “Vandalism in Village Green”Repairs and replacements
Countryside Officer Vicky Roscoe has been negotiating on our behalf and has wrung from the county’s coffers the means for a whole list of repairs and replacements.
Continue reading “Repairs and replacements”Watering the hedge
With the loan of Hope Nature Centre’s mobile water tank (thank you Caroline) and armed with as many watering cans and buckets as we could muster, FoSCP set about watering the new hedge in Simpson’s Field. Not quite a work party, more a socially distanced rescue mission.
Woodland fire
Please don’t light fires in the park; our woodland is tinder dry.
Continue reading “Woodland fire”Weekend littering
By Sunday morning, after people had anticipated the easing of lockdown and celebrated it with picnics and Saturday night parties in the copses, the park was strewn with rubbish. Ian and Pat, on their regular Sunday morning stroll, picked up dozens of empty drinks cans and enough general trash to fill a big black bin bag.
Continue reading “Weekend littering”World record of the week
