Spring Smörgåsbord

Reportage by the session leader and other photographers:

Numerous ‘small’ jobs today instead of one big one.  Centre of operations was the area overlooking the famous pond site – ‘famous’ because it was entirely renovated by us in our biggest project to date.

First job was to set up a new bench for the public to rest on.   Premade, it was massive to lift to where it was to live:

The legs were very long, but like an iceberg, would be largely out of sight.  Two-thirds of the legs were to be buried below ground.

Naturally, that meant digging two very deep holes.  Not easy with such stony ground and remains of old stumps to extract:

By tea-break the new furniture was in place.  The test-driver announced it was “perfect”:

The chief hole-digger was also able to take a rest, this time on the nearby conveniently shaped tree, the warden’s favourite:

The next task at that location: to protect a tree from itchy cows, who thought it ideal for scratching their backs.  Rather over-long fence posts were positioned around the tree …

then dug and thumped into place at an elegant angle.  The top cross bars were then screwed on to the posts, and the ends trimmed: 

More cross bars and barbed wire are still to be added.  That’s a task for the next group of volunteers who’ll be working at the site.

Meanwhile, another team of Green-Gymmers had been taking a stroll around most of Castle Meadows to set up an electric fence in this area, out of bounds to the cows:

That was not much exercise, so they had to collect a pile of logs …

and load them onto the trailer …

only to offload them elsewhere and turn them into a demonstration log-pile for the family wildlife day on site tomorrow: 

Finally, another area was strimmed by the warden, with power tool.  The cuttings had to be raked up into neat piles, with trad hand tools:

With all these tasks we had little time to admire the Meadows in full flush of spring flowers.

Extreme Gardening

Today was one of those occasions when volunteers had to be kept well away from the neighbours.

This was one of the neighbours’ houses:

Green-Gymmers had to be set a task well away from them not because our activities would have disturbed them, but because they would have been constantly distracting us.  This on the way to our work-site:

And these were next door’s children, having a wonderful time in the great outdoors, getting thoroughly messy from head to hoof:

Pigs in their natural habitat – woodland – are a rare sight nowadays.  These ones were very happy pigs.

Our task was to help bring back old woodland to coppicing rotation.  In the early 20th century the area probably had been managed for coppicing (hazels and some standards).  That the woodland is old, is shown by the presence of bluebells – yes, proper English bluebells:

Come March/April, this woodland floor will be a haze of blue:

In the meantime, there were old trees to be cut back.  Here is one which had been done earlier:

Note the brash piled round the base (to obviate depredation by deer), and some leading shoots left so that the tree can regenerate (even if some hungry deer do get through the defences).  During the extensive briefing we were told, “There are more deer in the UK now than ever in history.”

Cut wood was recycled, according to size/straightness, as:

• Stakes and binders for use in hedge-laying
• Logs for firewood
• Brash to put round the stumps
• Material for brash piles neatly constructed so as not to intrude on bluebell habitat

This involved much use of time-honoured tools and methods.  Here a happy Green-Gymmer deploying a billhook:

There was much instruction given on the angle at which to wield one’s billhook.  “A 33⁰ angle” definitely came into it somewhere …

There were also some interesting alternative uses of tools.  This, for example, is not a billhook carelessly left on a stump.  It is for cutting lengths of string:

And this is not a hurdle for a hedgehog gymkhana …

nor a hoop for an extreme version of croquet.  It is for holding a bundle of sticks off the woodland floor, while the length of string is tied round:

The soundscape included, to our delight, the extraordinary sound of happy pigs sleeping it off (who knew pigs could snore so loudly?) and a woodpecker drumming, on a tree, as it should.  Apparently the way to identify the species of woodpecker is to remember that a Great Spotted Woodpecker produces a short ‘drum-roll’, and the Lesser Spotted a long one; while the Green Woodpecker is the one which laughs at you. 

“Yes, there’s one at the golf course which does that,” volunteered one Green-Gymmer: “It laughs even before you’ve putted.”

– “You’re not supposed to putt with a woodpecker,” came the rejoinder: “You’re supposed to use a club.”

(Shades of Lewis Carroll there – Alice trying to use a flamingo as a croquet mallet?)

Green-Gym itself perhaps bears the same sort of relationship to normal horticulture.  

For it has been described as “a combination of extreme gardening and walking, plus just being out in the great outdoors” – in the right kit, of course.  Except that at Green Gym the range of ‘right kit’ varies from the old-&-battered-and-it-doesn’t-matter-if-it-gets-torn-and-muddy to the real town & country look:

All are equally welcome at Green Gym!