BTCV Woodland Management Course

Dead Hedges

BTCV Woodland Management Course Colleagues

Hello all

A lot has happened since my last blog. We have finished planting the wilderness for now.

The school has been spending more time in the wilderness with the children, and some children and parents were even invited to a Wilderness Adventure! All in all it seems like everyone had fun. I unfortunately missed it as I was at work!

BUT now, to work again on the Wilderness.

I need to write a management plan for the wilderness so that if I wasn't around that there would be a plan of works for the Wilderness that anyone could follow, and to do this I needed a little bit of help.

Which the school and BTCV provided in the form of a Woodland Management Course. What a brilliant two days!

So I now have a document which details how much intervention we will want in the Wilderness and all the projects that we would like to complete.

And I think I can now ID a leaf from a Hornbeam against a Beech and a Elm against a Hazel; Serrated, soft and smooth, rough like a cats tongue and fatter and shaggier.

And an Ash from an Elder and a Rowan; 9 leaflets, 5 leaflets 15 leaflets.

And a pedunculate oak; leaves are not on stalks, as opposed to a sessile oak, leaves are on stalks. Pheweee!

Clif and Jim running the course were fountains of knowledge and expertise and the others on the course including Petra who helped me with my ID's, BTCV Rob with his many jobs and stories, Isle of Man Greya and STAGS Jenny, Latin Tom, multi lingual Phil and everyone else( Gary, Justin, Tom 2, John and Neil), helped me to write the document but also made it really enjoyable and a valuable experience.

Hope you are all able to come down to the Wilderness (and volunteer) and see our teeny patch and enjoy it as much as we do.

www.redscapedesign.co.uk

Newts Moving Day

Kids and Newts

So today was a bit of a rush. Yesterday we had the idea that children from the school should be involved in the newts move and then we thought that maybe the local press would be interested.

So of course, this then had to be co-ordinated and somehow it worked!

all of the above came along at the same time. The kids, newts, toads and journalist from the Richmond and Twickenham Times all were together. The kids had a great time looking at the wildlife and we adults (thank you Lindsay for helping and holding and catching newts) remembered why we were involved in the hours and hours of work that it has taken to get even to this stage.

So the pond has been drained, the newts and toads have been moved to their temporary accomodation. Marking out should happen tomorrow with diggers on site Friday/Mon to contour the pond.

All in all a very successful if hectic day.

www.redscapedesign.co.uk