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Southern Town Park - Saturday 12th September 2026

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 Blog by Eleanor, photos by Eleanor and Adrian While the main Green Gym group were tackling the neglected forest school garden at Caldecott School, Dieuwke, Joan, Rosie, David and I went to our wildflower patch in Southern Town Park. This is one of "our" sites, along with both ends of the Ock Path, and it is important that we are not so busy working for other groups or organisations that we neglect these sites. Adrian had already been there to scythe and rake the area. This is a task which is done in the Autumn after the flowers have shed their seed. The cut material is raked off as soon as possible to prevent nutrients leaching into the soil, which would encourage too much grass to grow. Wildflowers need poor soil. The patch had been somewhat taken over by hogweed during the Summer. David had brought his scythe and cut down more hogweed growing to one side of the area. The rest of us cleared patches and sowed yellow rattle seed. Yellow rattle is parasitic on some types of vi...
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Caldecott Primary School - Saturday, 12th September 2026

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Blog by Sally.  Photos by Julio, Michele and Sally Looking at our autumn programme, you'd be forgiven for thinking we couldn't be in two places at once, but we were!  With two willing leaders and sites within close proximity to each other, Adrian led a party of 15 at Caldecott Primary School to tidy up their forest school site, including new members, Catherine and Phil, whilst Eleanor led a session at Southern Town Park (more of which in a separate blog) for the autumn cut and rake of the wildflower patch, as we would be hard-pushed otherwise to fit in two separate sessions for both of these lovely local sites.  Adrian had given a head start to the Southern Town Park site, by scything and raking the main wildflower patch earlier in the week, so that the group could then join the rest of us at the School at break time. We'd been given permission to park in the School's car park, where we met Amy from the School, who explained that she wanted us to clear the forest school...
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Two Pines Fen, Frilford Heath Golf Course - 7th to 9th September 2026

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Blog by Sally.  Photos by David and Sally With the Red Course closed for maintenance this week, it was an ideal opportunity to carry out the autumn cut and rake of the vegetation on this side of Two Pines Fen.  It was agreed that we could do this over a 3-day period.  A total of 11 volunteers signed up to help, 8 of whom were Green Gymmers, and on the first day, we worked under the supervision of Dr Judy Webb, who is one of the ecology consultants specialising in calcareous fen management. We started off with a surprisingly pleasant day weather-wise, as blog followers will recall that in recent years, we normally have to contend with "weather" - be it torrential rain, snow or the remnants of a hurricane. Day 1 - 7 of us met in the Greenkeepers compound car park, including Judy and Rich and made our way to set up our base just under the men's 16th tee.  The greenkeepers were out in force carrying out much-needed maintenance of the course following the drought.  ...
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