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Kennington Memorial Field - 16th September 2023

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 This blog was written by Eleanor. Photos by Kevin Twelve of us assembled in the playing field car park, ready for our session at Kennington Memorial Field, a sloping valley of chalk grassland, the original purpose of which was to be a war memorial, and is now managed by Oxford Preservation Trust. Hannah from OPT had shown me areas of scrub which needed cutting back. It is important to keep on top of this work to preserve the grassland habitat. There were cattle grazing on the field, eight bullocks, which will shortly be taken off by the farmer. We also needed to clear around two of the gates, particularly the one leading from the main Kennington Road, which was getting very overgrown so Carolyn and Helen E set off to do that. The rest of us set to work clearing the scrub around the trees, mostly brambles and briars and carrying the cut material to the existing piles in the wooded area. The cattle wandered around, at one stage taking an interest in our biscuits, but soon moved off. We
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Annual Picnic - Elizabeth Daryush Memorial Garden, Boars Hill - Saturday, 9 September 2023

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This week's blog is written by Kevin with photos by Kevin and Sally. The Annual Green Gym picnic was postponed from the end of August until this weekend as lots of people were unable to attend. As the original location Wittenham Clumps lacks shade, because of the high temperatures, a last minute vote was taken to change the venue to Boars Hill at the Elizabeth Daryush Memorial Garden, with its lovely shady sweet chestnut tree to sit under next to the pond. I think this garden is one of the loveliest places for the  Green Gym to work on, so it felt fitting the we should come back and spend time just enjoying it and we weren't even tempted to rake the newly cut meadow, but just relax and enjoy the day and each other's company. We had a good attendance of 12 members bringing with them a delicious assortment of savoury and sweet food.  Once everybody had arrived and decamped, set up the tables and chairs and spread the tablecloth, the usual procedure is to go for a short stroll
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Healthfest - Abingdon Market Place - Saturday 2nd September 2023

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 This blog was written by Eleanor.                                                                                                                                                                            At the same time as the hay clearing and stacking was happening in Barton Fields, the Healthfest was happening in the Market Place. The Healthfest is now an annual event organised by Healthy Abingdon. Many organisations took part, including Better Sport and Leisure, Mind, dementia charities, cycling groups, Park Run, a Dance Group, Archway and, of course, Green Gym, in fact any group or organisation which could improve participants' physical and mental health. The Healthfest ran from 10a.m. to 2p.m. but Green Gym just had a stall from midday because of our commitments in Barton Fields. We had our display board, leaflets and the new programme and got quite a bit of interest. There was also time to visit other stalls, get my blood pressure checked at the Better stall ( a bit high,
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Barton Fields, Saturday, 2 September 2023

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This week’s blogpost is by Kevin and the photos are by Eleanor D.  The grass raking at Barton Fields has been an annual session that Abingdon Green Gym takes on at a request from David Guyoncourt and fellow Barton Fields Green Team volunteers. By cutting the grass every year, it allows more diverse plants and animals to prosper. Grass snakes are found here and they have introduced slow worms.  At the beginning of the week, a tractor was used for the heavy work to cut the meadow and then the Green Team volunteers had raked the cut hay into smaller pitch fork size piles, leaving us to rake up all the hay and pile it up at the edges of the field.  The weather was kind to us as there hadn't been too much rain in the last couple of days, so the cut grass had dried out and made it a lot easier to move (no raker wants wet heavy lumps of grass to shift!).  Our leader for the day, Adrian, well organised as ever, unloaded the rakes, pitch forks and drag sheets ready to move them to our base
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Southern Town Park, Abingdon, Saturday 26th August

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Our main task today was to cut down the wild flower meadow, as it was the end of Summer and most of the flowers had shed their seeds. We met in the Youth Football Cub car park and made our way across the football pitches to the southern end of the park. The weather was fine and sunny but we were a little concerned by the forecast of late morning rain. Sally and Adrian set to work with their scythes. There was also litter picking to do and some Green Gymmers kindly volunteered for that task. The rest of us began raking up and transporting the vegetation to heaps under the trees. We decided to leave a small patch of corn marigold and another patch of flowers that were still in bloom. By break time, the scything of the wild flower patch was nearly done and we decided to attack some brambles on either side. We enjoyed our break, taking advantage of the nearby table and benches. The litter picking was also almost finished. In Summer, of course, some of the litter is concealed by vegetatio
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