Southern Town Park, Abingdon - Saturday 15th March 2025

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 Blog by Eleanor, photos by Julio, Michele and Eleanor

This was our twice yearly visit, once in Autumn and once in Spring, to Southern Town Park, where we have a wild flower patch. It was also the day of the Science Fair in the market place and, as some of our volunteers were helping with that, it was good to have twelve of us turning out for the Green Gym session.

We met in the Youth Football Club car park in Lambrick Way, which was packed with vehicles as there was a big tournament going on, and made our way around the pitches to our site at the far end of the park. The weather was quite sunny, though with a brisk, chilly wind. We were joined by one new volunteer, and as we started work, a passer by stopped and said he would like to join us at a future session, which was very encouraging.

Our tasks were to plant primrose plugs and violets at the front around the sign and to dig patches to sow annual seeds. We had cornfield mixtures plus borage, centaury and fumitory.

The site with our sign





 

Preparing for planting and sowing



There was also, as usual at this site, a lot of litter picking to be done as the area is used for drinking sessions and other more illicit activities.

The litter pickers set to work




Primrose plugs and violets planted




Seeds sown


Then it was time for our tea break. On this site, we have the luxury of a picnic table and benches.

Tea break





Some people had to make do with the ground!



After the break, we decided to line the informal path through the strip of woodland with logs and straight branches, There was an abundance of these that had been blown down during winter storms.

The path lined with logs and branches


There were also some brambles to be cut back, mostly long, trailing ones, some of which had got caught up in trees, We didn't want to tackle bramble patches as the bird nesting season had started. Of course, there was still more litter picking to do.

Here are some of the interesting finds from the natural world:

Birch polypore fungus (or razor strop fungus)




Solitary daffodil - not one we planted as it isn't a wild one




Small animal skull that Rosie litter picked

We were pleased with the amount of work we had done and hope to share photos of the wild flower patch in a few months time. We gathered up our tools and made our way back to the car park.

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