by David Feather
Our orchard was planted as part of a nationwide project to create Community Orchards across the UK. There is a website called The Orchard Project which supports local efforts. It is worth looking at as it has lots of interesting information and some recipes.
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Remember all those hazel stakes we cut, back at the beginning of October?
Continue reading “Protecting the stream”
From white elephants to daffodils.
Some of the £145 we raised on our White Elephant Stall at Southwick Flower Show on August Bank Holiday Monday has been spent on 250 native daffodil bulbs.
Continue reading “Workparty”
by Ian Bushell
The morning’s task was to cut, prepare and store enough hazel stakes to provide the structure for dead hedges to protect the banks and streams on either side of the footbridges into Studley Close and Village Green.
Continue reading “Cutting stakes”
A message of thanks from Sarah and Alan, our litter pickers, pictured here at work in yesterday’s unremitting rain.
Continue reading “A Big Thank You”
We are promised a damp start with heavy rain and strong winds for this week’s Wednesday work party. This is the tail-end of Hurricane Lee made manifest in Southwick’s nature reserve, what the Met Office likes to call Atlantic-dominated weather.
Continue reading “Named storms”
This week’s work party began with an official heat warning from the Countryside Team:
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A southern hawker (not the one in these images) visited the Wednesday Work Party in the picnic area at the reserve last week: such a beautiful creature.
Southern hawker (Aeshna cyanea)
Ragwort is extraordinarily successful; all the “injurious weeds” named in the 1959 Weeds Act are.
Continue reading “Ragwort”
We keep constant watch in the reserve for the beautiful invasive alien, Impatiens glandulifera, or Himalayan balsam. It might be very lovely to look at but it is an environmental horror story
Continue reading “Himalayan balsam”
by Ian Bushell
A really good turn-out today, just about everybody was there, and the weather stayed good right up until we got to the picnic area for coffee.
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The new bridge between Studley Close and the far end of Lambrok Meadow has been renamed, Studley Bridge, and given a thorough tidying by Wednesday’s workparty. Thanks guys!
We call this the orchid patch and last year, when the ragwort was sprayed, we fenced it off to protect the orchids. But the untreated ragwort thrived here, and this year has had to be hand- pulled by yesterday’s Wednesday Work Party. Well done, guys!
There is a new interpretation board next to Village Green pond, dedicated to the memory of Dave Galliers, known to his many followers as DKG, our in-house photographer until his death in 2020.
Continue reading “Dedicated to DKG”
Next week, work will begin on fencing part of the tributary stream that runs at the bottom of Village Green.
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Here’s a Good News Story…
..among all the doom and disaster we seem to have inflicted on our home planet.
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We have been making what might seem to our followers like a great fuss about the planting of just a very few disease resistant elm trees. Here are parts of a post from March 2020, which explain what disease our precious saplings are resistant to, and why we are so eager to get them established in the hedge between Cornfield and Sleepers.
Continue reading “Tree planting”
by Ian Bushell
On April 10th we checked the fifteen Dutch Elm Disease Resistant trees, donated by Peter Shallcross and Frank Crosier, that we had planted in April 2021.
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by Clive Knight
Phil, Frank, Peter White and I have started to clear the grass that has overgrown the edges of the path that cuts out the flooded bit by Puddle Corner. We were surprised to see how far the grass has encroached onto the path. We estimated that clearing both sides has opened up the path by around 80-90cm. We haven’t reached half way but hope to finish next week.
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by Ian Bushell
Today’s work party [the 15th] was all out planting in the mud.
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Pictures and a message from the Friends at work on Wednesday:
Continue reading “Chain Saw Gang”
There is always a gang of children, sometimes junior schoolers, sometimes older, playing somewhere in Village Green woods. The personnel changes as one by one gang members lose interest in sitting round a damp campfire, drinking mix-up or smoking what somebody sold them as top quality weed. But new arrivals come to fill the empty places and the gang continues.
What have they been up to?
Behind the picnic place at Fiveways, beyond the hedge, is a deep, deep ditch. The Friends have been clearing this ditch, cutting back the old hedges and haloing the oak trees (nos.5503 to 5507) that stand on the far bank. If you look over the bridge where all the paths meet, you will see where they have been working.
Continue reading “Primrose ditch”
A veteran oak tree is usually somewhere between 200 and 400 years old. These are trees that have local historical significance or that play important roles in a particular biosphere or landscape. In the reserve we have many notable and veteran oak trees, numbered and mapped.
Continue reading “Haloing oak trees”
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 