Southern Town Park - Saturday, 11th October 2025

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Blog by Sally.  Photos by Eleanor and Sally

A perfect dozen turned out for our session at Southern Town Park, led by Eleanor, on Saturday, 11th October.  We met in the car park off Lambrick Way and made our way over the football pitches to the wildflower patch that we started a number of years ago, including with free native wildflower seeds from Kew Gardens under their Grow Wild scheme.

Our main tasks were to scythe the wildflower patch and rake up the cut vegetation and put that on top of existing habitat piles.  This also has the advantage of reducing the build-up of nutrients as most wild flowers prefer poor soil.  There were also some fallen branches which we needed to cut up and we used these to mark the sides of the pathway, as well as do a litter pick.  We are now well versed in the Council's requirements to only put glass and plastic bottles and cans in the clear sacks and everything else in the blue ones.

The wildflower patch before the cut and rake

Eleanor briefs the team

Scything and raking in progress

Rosie and Margaret preparing branches for marking the path through the wood

Break time

After break, the litter pickers continued on their way and managed to collect a couple of bags full, whilst the cutting and clearing of the wildflower patch continued.  We disturbed a shrew and a field vole, which made their way to shelter.  We had to be careful scything around the colourful Wildflower sign that Ursula and James made letting everyone know about it.  

Rosie continued cutting back the nettles and brambles to prevent them from growing over the main path.  It was soon time for us to plant out the violets and cowslips that Eleanor had brought and some foxgloves that Rosie brought, as well as sow some yellow rattle seeds, which will suppress the rye grass and allow the wildflower seeds to germinate and grow.  In the wood area, we also planted some wood anemones and native daffodil bulbs around a few trees that Eleanor had marked with canes near the path that had been beautifully marked by the branches that Margaret and Rosie had cut.  The litter was taken to Peep-O-Day lane for Biffa to collect.

As we left the site, we were hoping for rain to come soon to help everything on its way.  We look forward to returning in the spring to see how everything is faring.

The wildflower patch after our ministrations

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