Southern Town Park, Saturday 26th of March 2022

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This week's blog post was written by our esteemed chair, Eleanor D:

Arriving at our usual meeting place for Southern Town Park, we found the car park ram packed with vehicles of parents bringing footballing kids. There was clearly some kind of tournament on. The earlier arrivals managed to squeeze into the remaining spaces but the others had to find spaces out in the road.

We set off round the perimeter of the pitches to reach our encampment at the southern end and split into groups to pick litter, saw up fallen trees and work on the wild flower patch.  First, we needed to dig up nettles, cleavers and grass and clear ten patches to sow the new seeds. It was three years ago that we last worked on the patch. In 2020 we were prevented by Covid, in 2021 by bureaucracy but this year nothing could stop us.

After the break we were ready to sow the seeds. We had meadow cranesbill, greater knapweed, small scabious, betony, foxglove, dark mullein, dropwort, white musk mallow and viper’s bugloss. Most are perennials, so we won’t see them until next year.

The litter pickers hadn’t found as much as usual, but there was a bit of fly tipping and, of course, little black bags of dog poo that dog owners see fit to leave by the footpath. The tree sawyers had done a good job of cutting up fallen trees and cutting trailing brambles. We will see how the wildflower patch fares throughout the summer. It has certainly always attracted a lot of insects.

The Abingdon Green Gym flower patch


Tree vs three

Helen happy planting the wildflower seeds

 

A tiny toad found in the dried-out plants

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