Abingdon Green Gym Blog

Following the cancellation of the scheduled Geo Conservation session at Lye Hill Quarry, we were fortunate to find that our services were needed at Boars Hill, on Oxford Preservation Trust land, which is managed by BBOWT. This time it was a new site, the Elizabeth Daryush Memorial Garden. Elizabeth Daryush was a poetess, the daughter of the poet Robert Bridges. She and her Persian husband lived at the house called Stockwell on Boar's Hill and they donated the garden to the Oxford Preservation Trust. A few yards from the entrance is a large pond with two benches beside it and two large sweet chestnut trees. The rest of the garden is mostly rough grassland with trees around the edge and one or two more benches. Green Gym's task was to clear some of the bramble bushes and small trees in the middle and at the  edge of the field. We met at the usual meeting place and then squeezed into fewer cars to drive up the narrow road towards the Youlbury scout camp. having parked in the r...

Green Gym on 25th October will not be at Lye Hill Quarry but at Boars Hill. For further details and meeting place, phone or email Eleanor (contact details on programme).

We are very fortunate to have so many parks, playing fields and and playgrounds in Abingdon.  The football club in Lambrick Way is known well enough to parents of children who play football, but beyond that is a semi wild area with some playground equipment and a BMX trail and plenty of space to kick a ball around or walk the dog.  Just please, please put your doggy bags into the bins provided (or take them home) they will not decompose. We had the luxury of a picnic table for our tea break and worked in the fenced areas of tree plantations, clearing brambles which threaten to overwhelm the young trees. Also there is always plenty of litter to pick up, and we did well filling at least four sacks from all areas, including the margins of the football field. In the intermittent bursts of sunshine, wet berries glistened and trees glowed with bright yellows and reds against a stormy indigo sky. Our party of eight was lucky not to get wet, especially Robert who came all the...

Once again we were at Abraham's Wood, Boar's Hill to continue with our attempts to eradicate the laurel and bamboo. The previous tasks we have carried out here include making "doughnuts" around newly coppiced hazel to prevent the deer from nibbling the new growth, building a dead hedge and planting oak tree whips. Unlike last week, the weather was fine and sunny and despite predicted scattered showers, remained dry throughout the morning. As we made our way down through the meadow, with its wonderful view of Oxford, we met a couple of disconsolate mushroom gatherers returning from a fungus foray with about two mushrooms. The weather had been much too dry in September for any worthwhile quantity of mushrooms to have appeared by the second week in October. Having made our encampment in the wood, one group set to work on the bamboo roots with mattocks and the others attacked the laurel. Bamboo has runners which spread underground, criss crossing in an intr...

The new Abingdon Green Gym programme for Autumn - Winter 2014 has just been published (below).  For a pdf file version, click HERE

Although billed on our programme as being at Withymead Nature Reserve, Saturday's session was actually held at Little Meadow, south of Goring-on-Thames.  The site is a three acre wildflower meadow, managed by the same charitable trust as nearby Withymead.  The Green Gym had visited the site on a previous occasion during the summer of 2013. Little Meadow is our farthest-flung site from Abingdon, being a 30-40 minute drive away for most.  However, the location of the meadow on the banks of the Thames, on the edge of Goring itself, is quite delightful and we are therefore more than happy to make the journey! Due to the lengthier commute, we assembled slightly later than usual at 10am, at which time we parked up and met with the local volunteer group.  Tools were unloaded and divided up for transporting to the meadow itself, a good ten minutes walk from the parking spot. Upon arrival at the site, work was already underway, with site wardens Dorothy and Keith mowing...