Abingdon Green Gym Blog

 Blog by Eleanor, photos by Sally and Eleanor This Saturday we were at Elizabeth Daryush Garden, Boars Hill. It used to be part of a private garden, which was donated to the Oxford Preservation Trust, and consists of acid grassland, which is comparatively rare in Oxfordshire. There were eleven Green Gymmers plus three volunteers from OPT and even with this number, we wondered if there would be enough of us to complete the various tasks that needed to be done. It had been raining during the night and was still cloudy, so we were hoping that the weather would be kind to us. Sally, our leader for the session explained the various tasks, which had been set out by Rod, OPT's consultant ecologist. We needed to cut back bracken and bramble growing among the broom bushes, remove a forsythia which was a garden escape, cut sprouting shoots and overhanging branches from the sweet chestnut, cut back branches from the woodland area, remove sprouting willow from the pond, also remove crassula, a

Blog by Sally.  Photos by Adrian and Sally Regular readers of our blog will know that we have a number of trained scythers and this week, they were given the opportunity to hone their skills with the expert guidance of Nicole Clough of Joy of Scything.  BBOWT kindly agreed that we could use the Lashford Lane Nature Reserve for the Improvers Scything Course for the day.   We met in the car park area for the reserve and Nicole quickly scythed a patch of long grass for the improvers to set up their base.  Six Green Gymmers attended the course and, after introductions to find out what everyone hoped to gain from the day, Nicole went over some basic safety principles on handling scythe blades, sharpening techniques and difficult scything.  The Green Gymmers were faced with long grass and also had to negotiate ant hills!  The perfect training ground for the type of conservation scything that we do. Adrian led the remainder of the Green Gymmers for our normal Saturday morning session, which i

Blog by Sally, photos by Kevin and Sally A former sand and limestone quarry, Dry Sandford Pit Nature Reserve is of national importance with its combination of different habitats:  fossil-rich cliffs, alkaline fen, ponds, streams, chalk grassland scrub and woodlands.  We were last here in June to remove Himalayan Balsam, but this week Kevin, our leader for the session, had been briefed by BBOWT, who own and manage the reserve, to work on two areas of the fen - cutting reed and removing invasive scrub (alder, willow and birch) and taking the cut vegetation onto existing heaps to prevent nutrient build-up in the fen, and cutting back overgrowing vegetation around gates and along the path.   We assembled in the reserve car park and took the tools along the path to the bench installed in memory of the Abingdon Naturalists Society's founder, Tony and Susi Searle, where we set up our base.  This overlooks the area of fen where most of the group would work - using the tree popper to remove

Blog by Eleanor. Photos by Sally, Ursula and Julio Saturday, 31st August saw our annual fixture helping with the hay raking and stacking at Barton Fields. This site is managed by the Abingdon Naturalists' Green Team, led by David Guyoncourt. Over the past years they have created a wonderful wildflower meadow, and the time had come for it to be cut. The meadow had been machine cut on Wednesday and on Thursday and Friday the Green Team volunteers had begun the job of raking up the hay and stacking it around the edges of the meadow.  It's important to rake off the cut as soon as possible as wildflowers thrive on poor soil without too many nutrients. The Green Team had raked the big meadow, so the sixteen Green Gymmers set to work on the two smaller meadows. Raking into heaps Wildflowers on the edge of the meadow Loading on to drag sheets Putting the load on the heap Graham with a load By now, we were glad of our tea break, though at least it was dry weather and not too hot. A welc