Abingdon Green Gym Blog

This Saturday, Abingdon Green Gym had been asked to help the tree volunteers at Hinksey Heights by clearing around the recently planted trees and doing some weeding.  The trees are a mixture including rowan, oak and hazel and were planted as part of the community scheme to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden, so it is very important for the landowner, John, that they are well maintained to give them the best possible chance of surviving. 10 Green Gymmers were assisted by three of the tree volunteers, Mark, Neil and Lucy, and John also came along to help direct us.  He kindly let us have use of the wheelbarrow so that we could transport the tools more easily along the Hinksey Nature Trail to the lower pond area.  The trees are located in the dell and we were able to set up our base using the two picnic benches (quite the luxury!) by the pond.  It is a site well known to us as we have cleared around the trees in previous years...

 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....

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...