Abingdon Green Gym Blog

We were asked by Natural England to return to Cothill Fen to do some work there, so the venue was different from that on the programme. Under the direction of Graham from Natural England, our task was to rake up the reeds that had already been cut and put them in piles round the edge of the fen and to bend the young reeds in order to supress their growth. Graham told us that we need to discourage the growth of too many reeds so that fenland wild plants are given a chance to grow. Marsh valerian is growing there, as well as lady's smock. We saw several interesting spiders, a number of young frogs, and on our way out we spotted a slow worm. We hope to return there during the next programme. -Eleanor   Kevin raking some cut reeds   Graham stacking the reeds

Today we went to the Drayton Road allotment pond, which we had dug in previous sessions in the Spring. We were a small but industrious group and our task was to remove the rest of the earth that we had dug out earlier, sculpt the  edges to make the sides less steep and remove some of the weeds such as thistles and nettles. At a later date we hope to come back and plant some native pond and marginal plants. We had finished the job by 11.30 so we moved on to Southern Town Park outside the allotment gate to pick up litter. -Eleanor

This week we were at Abbey Fishponds helping the Abbey Fishponds group and we were very pleased to welcome a new volunteer to Green Gym. The main task was laying woodchip on the main path through the reserve. The weather was much better than on the previous two Saturdays, though the ground was still quite muddy. Other tasks included cutting back branches growing over the paths on the edge of the reserve and pulling up goose grass. We also found quite a number of Himalayan Balsam seedlings in the reed bed area, which we uprooted in the hope of lessening the task later in the Summer. - Eleanor photos by Eleanor and Andrew: Abbey duckpond! transporting woodchip laying the path  more path-laying operations  woodchip pile pulling up goose grass the completed path