More trees, please

“A morning mainly involving digging/planting rather than the destruction/fire that some prefer!!” was the session leader’s summary of the programme for today.

It was to be a return visit to some familiar sites in Benson, including: 

Warwick Spinney, April 2018

In spring that spot, especially on a warm and sunny day – which today was, at least to start with – can be quite pleasant.  It is not, however, a noted sitooterie.  (Yes, that is now an officially recognized word in the Oxford English Dictionary.)  Or perhaps we should say the place is not much of a sitooterie yet.  Maybe it will be, once Green Gym and other volunteers have worked through the programme for management of the land.

Not much sitting around and admiring the place for us this morning!  The task was to plant little trees along fence-lines: plugging gaps in the existing tree cover in two locations in the village, Sunnyside and Warwick Spinney.  Not quite farming in the city stuff, but doing countryside things in a more built-up area than we usually work in, if I’m not mistaken.  (Do I hear 21?)

At the Spinney, planting involved some lopping of branches of existing trees, plus other clearance to make room for the new ones to grow.  – Although much of the preliminary work had already been done by a small Green-Gym party earlier this year, so that the tree-planting detail would not fetch up “stuck on a wire, out on a fence.”

WGG working and New Year celebrating party, 1 Jan 2019

Fence-line cleared, ready for the next team

Keeping out of mischief?

“A number of tasks to keep you going,” the site warden had outlined for this morning: 
“a bonfire (provided the wind is not blowing towards the main road) … coppicing … tree planting … trimming the willow spiling … And if all that gets finished then some brook clearing can be done.”

Come the day, the wind was not a problem, just that everything outside was so damp after last week’s (post-Green-Gym) snowfall.  Some of the surrounding landscape was still quite wintry.  This was one volunteer’s route to today’s site:

Having got safely to Green Gym, the first thing volunteers discovered was that there had been a “slight change of plan”.  We would now be starting at the far side of the site.  So the first thing to do was to march across, carrying most of our kit – a nice warm-up:

Even more important to keep your footing on this stretch

Hi ho, hi ho …

Mind your head!

All joined in the preliminary task: clearing the area where saplings were to go in.  (Evidently tree planting was going ahead.)  The closest we got to a bonfire, however, was loading on to a burn-site materials which will be combustible IDC:

Directions

Awaiting a spark

Once the main part of the clearance had been finished, the group split into two teams.  One team stayed put, to finish off making the area as suitable as we could for little trees, and to plant same:

Digging the first hole …

for the first WGG tree-planting of the season

It’s technical

Making progress

Tree planting is something we have done many times before at Green Gym, but there are always individual volunteers for whom this is a new task.  (Which comes with its own terminology: the little saplings are not “sticks”, they are ‘whips’.)  And even if some of us have done this dozens of times before, there is always someone new to work with, who has done this so many more times before, and from whom there is something new to learn.  For instance, that when mulching, it is good not to leave mulch actually touching the young trees.

Teamwork seemed to be a theme of the work at this end of the site, whether labouring or preparing for tea-break:

“It’s post-Christmas season”

Meanwhile, the other team headed not back to the other side of the site, but beyond: to the banks of the River Thames.  First port of call: safety briefing.

“Don’t fall in”

The task seemed to be one which had not featured on the original list: to tidy up bank-edging.

Looking for Moses

Before

After

The expeditionary team returned to base for tea-break.  Minus one member who found they needed to go home to strip off wet clothing and get under a hot shower.  (No, they had not fallen in; but they had become more closely acquainted with the dampness of the Thames in February than is really a good idea, just as they were saying “I need to look out for crocodiles and …”)

After the break, the ‘away’ team made off again, but this time only as far as the hazel coppice, to do a little of the coppicing which had been suggested.  They were back in time to watch the finishing touches being put to the tree-planting project:

Well someone has to finish the job

50 whips in place.  No guarantee how many will ‘take’

Green-Gym Allsorts

By the Session Leader:

A return to Millbrook Mead after just two weeks, for a nice mixture of jobs, and correspondingly a nice mix of before and after pics.

The biggest job was repairing the frame of the boardwalk.  This we had hoped to do last time, only the materials had not arrived.  This time, our engineers were not to be denied:

Before

During: “Spot on!”

After

Only one passer-by decided that the ‘Path Closed’ sign did not apply to her.  Not that her dog minded!

The last of the willows was pollarded – just in time before nesting season is in full swing:

Before

After

Some more of the brash was burned:

This put to the test a new item of clothing, which had been bought on the grounds that it was advertised as ‘flameproof’:

During the morning, the top became liberally sprinkled with hot ashes, which left not a single hole in the fabric, but left instead one very pleased unburnt gymmer.

 

Elsewhere on site, a stream was uncovered:

Before

After

Some gymmers needed a little assistance to escape from the sticky sucky mud.

The site welcome-&-information-board had its weed carpet lifted, and the base made ready once again for planting with wild flowers:

Before

After

And another two bucket-loads of whips were planted, thus extending the area that we planted last time:

Just a fortnight after our previous visit, and already there were more flowers to be seen around the ‘gym’.  Here some hellebores flourishing in the neighbouring gravel garden:

And here, some flower beginning with a ‘b’, whose name we knew at the start, but could we remember it at tea time?  

Someone’s brain spluttered into life eventually, and we got the name back – only for it to be forgotten again!  [‘Butterbur’?  The name of the plant, that is, not a description of the state of a Green-Gymmer’s brain after a hard work-out. – Ed.]

Altogether, a most productive morning, as well as an enjoyable one.