This is the fourth and last of our spring campaign lectures about scooping poop in the park. Scooping poop may save you a £1,000. Southwick Country Park belongs to Wiltshire Council. It is categorised as an open space to which the public have access. Therefore, despite its being rented out for agricultural use, it comes... Continue Reading →
Sent: 21 May 2018 21:16:38 . . . To: friendsofscp@outlook.com . . . Dear Friends of Southwick Country Park, I was out in the park just recently taking our two dogs for their daily walk, when I was fortunate enough to encounter a group of Friends together with a nice lady from the Wiltshire Council... Continue Reading →
By Sarah Marsh . . . This month’s report is all about our volunteers and the work they do. Without the Friends, the Park would be in a sorry state as the Countryside Team gets ever smaller and funding is limited. We are all unpaid and give our time willingly to keep the Park looking... Continue Reading →
The vandals are back. Last night we got this message from DKG: "Just returned from a walk around the park with Chris S. Unfortunately the vandals are back. Four trees have been ring barked in the copse in Village Green, the same area where we had trouble last year. If it was children they knew... Continue Reading →
Ragwort has many common names; in fact some, like stinking willie and marefart, are downright vulgar. Both refer to the plant's unpleasant smell. Another set of names, staggerwort, stammerwort and sleepy-dose, are about to its toxicity. Then there is felon weed, swine grass and our personal favourites: scrog and weeby. To go with its unsavoury nicknames, Ragwort... Continue Reading →
By DKG: "A few photos from a stroll last night, unfortunately the cloud closed in and even a few spots of the wet stuff, very dull and dismal. The Bluebells are situated in the copse in Brunt's Field; a lovely display this year after the haloing last year. There is no sign of the green... Continue Reading →
Most bio-degradable poo bags are not really bio-degradable; they are photo-degradable. In UV light their long molecular chains break down and they become lots of little pieces of plastic. If you wrap perfectly biodegradable dog faeces in non-biodegradable plastic and hang it in a tree, it either hangs there for years, is collected by a... Continue Reading →
Our native species of bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) is threatened by the spread of Spanish squill (Hyacinthoides hispanica), a similar species imported into our gardens from southern Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Our native bluebells are dark blue and fragrant, with flowers on just one side of the stem producing that characteristic droop; the... Continue Reading →
Despite the announcement on Wiltshire Council's website and in the Wiltshire Times, the Traffic Regulation Order notices that have gone up in the car park do not mean that parking charges will be introduced at Southwick Country Park. They are part of the formal consultation process that the county has to complete in order to... Continue Reading →
"This was the scene I was greeted with in Sleepers this morning, they kindly left their carrier bag so I was able to clear up and get to a bin." DKG
The Friends, on a wet and squelchy day last week, prepared to survey the park's slow worm population. Here is DKG's report: "Mats were cut and numbered for the slow worm survey with 40 mats laid in 4 areas (10 per area). These will be monitored in the coming weeks once we have... Continue Reading →
This is the second in our series of posts about scooping dog poop in the park; the pun in the title is intentional. Most of the park's fields are let to a local farmer who takes two cuts of grass from them each year. That crop is sold on, as hay or silage, mostly to... Continue Reading →
BY SARAH MARSH The winter weather has not been kind to the Friends and all over the Park the ground has been very boggy and waterlogged. When it has stopped raining, we had to endure bitter icy cold winds blowing from the east. However, we are a hardy bunch and only missed one session of... Continue Reading →
Hats and scarves was the order of the day for Wednesday's work party, and hedges and ditches, out of the east wind, were the best places to spend the morning. The park, however, was getting on with spring to an accompaniment of birdsong. Trish saw a weasel hunting through the hedge; it ran across the... Continue Reading →
One of the perennial jobs around the Park is collecting litter. Most weeks sees one of the Friends with litter picker and rubbish sack in hand. All sorts of rubbish is found especially during the winter months when the foliage dies back and it is easier to spot. Sometimes we come across rubbish that has... Continue Reading →
We were given three English oak tree saplings for the park. The saplings, perhaps ten years old, were grown from the acorns of ancient Wiltshire oaks: the Cathedral Oak, Cromwell’s Oak and, we were told, the Sherston Oak. The Cathedral Oak, a magnificent tree, huge and contorted, 10 metres round and believed to be more... Continue Reading →
