Abingdon Green Gym Blog

The new Abingdon Green Gym programme for Spring 2016 has just been published, as below or find a higher-resolution on our website by clicking  HERE

There were two main tasks to be done in Southern Town Park - clearing brambles on the western side of the park, where we hadn't been for over a year, and litter picking. When we arrived, we found there was also a fallen tree in the wooded area, which looked as if it had been partially burnt. There is a great deal of littering as well as fly tipping and sometimes vandalism in this area, which is a shame as it provides varied wildlife habitats as well as walking and leisure for local people. Fortunately there were fourteen Green Gymmers to tackle the work. Several of us set to work on the brambles, others on the litter picking. Kevin and Robert went to saw up the fallen tree and stack the branches. Among the fly tipped items were a bicycle frame, a grill pan and a can of petrol, which had no doubt been used for a spot of arson. We were glad of our tea break and had the relative luxury of a picnic table and some cake. No ginger nuts, though. It appears that the ginger nut fac...

It was a cold and misty morning as we gathered at the car park for Cothill Fen, opposite the Merry Miller pub. We were met as usual here by Judy Webb from Natural England who would supervise the morning's tasks. Following the trek down the path to the fen itself, we were fully briefed on our objectives. Judy had some old photos of the site that she showed us - how the area used to look, with a much larger pond and more expansive fenland area in general.  Our job was therefore to continue cutting back small trees and shrubs that have been encroaching upon the boundary in the interim. The terrain underfoot, in and around the trees, was swamp-like, making it a fairly tricky area in which to operate. However, armed with saws and loppers, we were keen to get underway and to remain warm! Small trees and shrubs were felled and cut into sections, before stacking into piles. We were careful to ensure that species such as willow were kept off the ground so that they wouldn't put do...

It was back to Abrahams Wood, Boars Hill on Saturday, where we met with Andy Gunn from Oxford Preservation Trust who was supervising our session. There were two main jobs - firstly to remove a neglected and potentially dangerous barbed-wire fence from the old golf course area, and secondly to continue felling the non-native and invasive laurel from the woods.  We split into sub-teams and Andy instructed each on the finer points of these tasks.    The fence-removers set about donning safety glasses and taking bolt-cutters and other specialist tools to enable safe removal of the barbed-wire from the fence posts.  The wire was somewhat entangled around shrubs and bushes in the vicinity, thus loppers were also employed to set it free, before winding it up, ready for transporting away.  Next, the fence posts were removed.  Some of these could simply be pulled up, while others required digging out with spades. Meanwhile, the other group had plenty to ke...

It was our annual visit to Kennington Memorial Field for this week's session.  The meeting place was the car park for the playing field.  We arrived just before the Saturday morning kids football teams who use the pitches adjacent to the work site here. We were met by a couple of local volunteers, who showed us what needed to be done. Namely, to cut back the encroachment of blackthorn and brambles with the idea of encouraging the grass to grow for the summer-grazing cattle. It is the intention that the animals will keep the bushes from returning by nibbling away at any new shoots that may emerge. We set about the task with loppers to tackle the thick and tough shoots, wearing thorn-proof gloves and eye protection.  Otherwise, dragging out the long strands of brambles and needle-sharp spikes on the thorn stems could inflict a painful reminder of our visit! Once the cut stems had been piled up, it was a question of moving these piles gingerl...

This session was scheduled for tree planting at the town end of the Ock Path. We had planted 50 trees two years ago in the semi circular area between the main path and the woodchip path. Most of the trees had survived but we needed to fill in gaps where trees had died. We had been given a "package" of 50 free trees by the Woodland Trust - wild cherry, silver birch, aspen, alder and Norway maple but we really only needed 20 of these. Aspen and alder are riverside species and silver birch survives flooding quite well. We decided not to use the maple and as for the cherry, we just had to hope it would survive future floods, which are an almost annual event in this area. The  weather was  grey, damp and windy but once again we were lucky as the heavy rain held off until we were packing up at the end. I had marked out with stakes where the trees were to go the previous day so it was a question of locating the stakes and beginning the planting. As well as tree planting there w...

A small group of green Gym ladies met in Ursula's kitchen on 8th and 15th February to make "Green Gym Seville Orange Marmalade".  We have been doing this for the past few years and selling it to raise funds for Green Gym. We spent the morning shredding the peel by hand and boiling it in two Maslin pans. By midday it was time to add the sugar and take turns to stir until the marmalade reached setting point. By early afternoon it was ready to pour into jars.  Altogether, over the two sessions, we made 60 jars, each decorated with our own attractive label. The marmalade will be sold at the very reasonable price of £2 per jar. -Eleanor