Category: Maintenance

Car Park Super Heroes

Joan and Patrick Jones are the chairman and treasurer of the Friends of Southwick Park. They emailed us:

To all of the Country Park Team and all the wonderful extra helpers.

Joan and I would just like to extend our very biggest thanks to all concerned for the marvellous work that you performed on Sunday. We pulled in to the Country Parkon our way back today and were astounded by the amount and quality of the work you had done. Talk about “Dog poo fairies,” we reckon it was the action of “CAR PARK SUPER HEROES”.

Thank you all so much and we promise to be with you in March. See you Wednesday.

Kindest regards

Joan and Patrick

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Text and Voicemail

FoSCP now has a phone number for text and voicemail.

0774708798

Use it to report litter, things broken or damaged, and abandoned or dumped; the phone will be checked daily by one of our volunteers.

Continue to report antisocial behaviour to the police; their contact details are in the menu.

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Tomorrow is the second Wednesday of the month: a work party day. Come and join us; we meet at 9.30am in the main car park and we work until midday. Bring thornproof gloves, sturdy footwear and a coffee mug. Looking forward to meeting you.

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Tuesday work party

Tomorrow (Tuesday 30th October) is a regular work party day. Please come and join us; we meet in the car park at 9.30am and work until midday with a pause for coffee; there will be biscuits.

You will need sturdy footwear and thorn proof-gloves; the tools will be provided. The Met Office says it will be very cold.
 

gardening-tools

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The Lone Oak is showing its age;  it has dead and dying branches and parts of the trunk are being hollowed out by fungus. We have decided that it should  be allowed to get on with being several hundred years old, providing habitat for a whole new spectrum of species; we are not going to interfere. Instead,  we have fenced around the tree to keep our park users safe.

The alternative would be to chop bits of it off, in order to protect the picnicking public from falling branches. This summer it became quite the thing to picnic under the Lone Oak, a tribute to its elder status.

The tree will live a long time yet; the fence will mellow, warp, acquire its own little ecology,  rot away and be replaced long before the tree is done. An ageing oak tree is a wonderful resource of nesting holes, rotting wood for beetle larvae and a hundred species of fungi, a prop for climbing plants, a garden of mosses and ferns.

With luck, the Lone Oak will stand in Cornfield for centuries to come.

.o.

Fence around the Lone Oak by DKG

Pictures by DKG

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October work party

Words and pictures by DKG:

Apologies, for not getting these photos posted earlier. It was not only Ian having a senior moment on Wednesday (Ian forgot the work party; turned up late. Ed.) for some reason my camera was not set up correctly when taking photos that day. I have had to delete several as they were not suitably exposed. There were other errors, even though they seemed ok when I looked at them after shooting. I have managed to improve these to some extent in Photoshop to make a reasonable photos.
Click here to see the results:

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A letter from a park user

Dear friendsofscp,

I am on your mailing list and during the summer I visit the park with my husband and dog a minimum of 5 days a week. Sometimes every day. Not sure what will happen during the winter as days get shorter and work gets in the way.

Read on:

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Criminal damage

The bench by the decorated bridge has been damaged and will probably have to be replaced. One of the supports has been snapped right off. There is no sign of rot in the wood; it must have taken considerable force to achieve. A bench like this one, and its installation, costs £500.

Can you help?

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Dot Moth

A dot moth (Melanchra persicariae) caterpillar on a spindle tree, seen and photographed by DKG while the FoSCP volunteers cleared the undergrowth around the young trees at the top of Sheep Field. Spindle is not recorded as one of this caterpillar’s food plants, but sallow is, and hazel, nettles, docks and several other species growing in that plantation and its understorey.

Read on:

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Summer work party

Words and pictures by DKG:

A few photos from Wednesday’s morning in the park. Work included clearing grass around the fruit trees, taking up the mats, and checking the guards and stakes. We removed the fruit to ensure stronger growth next season.

…

clearing grass around the fruit trees
clearing ragwort at the top of Sheep Field
grass and nettles adjacent to the path

…

Overgrown grass and nettles adjacent to the path from the allotments’ main gate were cleared. We also cleared small areas of ragwort on the allotment boundary and the plantation at the top of Sheep Field. We bagged it and put it into the back of the little Wiltshire Council van to be taken away. Click for more

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Drought

 

This is now the longest continuous period of drought since 1976. The park’s paths are dusty, the grass is brown and crunchy underfoot,  some of the trees are shedding leaves in an attempt to stop water-loss and the streams are shrinking.

Continue reading “Drought” →

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Rag Week

The heatwave has brought the ragwort into flower early. There isn’t a lot of it, but it’s blooming beautifully; threatened by drought, it will seed rapidly and each plant can produce as many as 150,000 seeds. So….. it’s time for all those who complained about the spraying in the spring to turn out to pull ragwort.

Continue reading “Rag Week” →

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Sarah’s Report to the Village Newsletter

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 lovely and preserve it for future generations. But working in the Park is just one part of the Friends commitments.

Continue reading “Sarah’s Report to the Village Newsletter” →

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