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

Ferns and Grasses!

Well we have a limited budget and I wanted to get some amazing plants ... how to do this? Well ask the right people and they come in and do you favours for a good cause.

The world famous authority on grasses Neil Lucas at Knoll Gardens in Dorset is sending us his best grasses and Eupatoriums for the Wilderness. I can't wait to see them on site and for the lovely pink umbels to light up and anchor the pond with their soft pink hue. The grasses are going to add texture and height and a haze through which the pond will glisten.

And I had no end of trouble trying to source some Polystichum aculeatums (evergreen native hardy shield fern) as they were all sold out and my tight budget was now non-existant after being fairly invoiced by Knoll. But Mark Straver at Crocus did us a magnificent deal and I have been able to almost buy everything on my list for the wilderness. The ferns were picked up by me and are now having a little holiday in my back garden. WooHOO!!!!

See you next Wednesday!

www.redscapedesign.co.uk

Pond Planting and Volunteers!

Jake setting his teeny newts free!

Children from Rainforest Class

Bats Class throwing oxygenators into the pond

Hello to all my 5 regular readers!

So the pond has been planted up with the below:

Key:

Butomus umbellatus x 20

Caltha palustris x 20

Iris pseudoacorus x 30

Myriophyllum spicatum x 25

Potomogeton crispa x 25

Veronica beccabunga x 20

Myosotis scirpiodes x 20

Aponogeton distachyos x 6

Callitriche palustris x 25

Ceratophyllum demersum x 25

These took some getting. We had a few false starts trying to get these as there were some miscommunications to do with invoicing for them.

Anyway eventually they were all paid for and delivered ready for our next big volunteer day on the 3rd of March. However the volunteers did not come! Oh NO I hear you say!!

I think it was too close to half term and people had just forgotten. But the plants were there and the water was cold so I called in my lovely husband to come and help me (and get in the water whilst I directed from the dry and warmer side)

The children came in to help us by throwing in/delicately planting the oxygenators into the pond (as you can see above).

Jake came into school with a tub of baby smooth newts that had been found and needed rehousing and he let them swim off into the Wilderness pond. He was brilliant at this and let them jump off his hands into the water.

It was a very successful day and much was achieved. Please put the next planting day, Wednesday March 23rd, in your diary!

www.redscapedesign.co.uk

Tree Planting Day in National Tree Week

Alison, Caroline and Steve from the BCTV

HSBC and the Rev Jerry who turned up for lunch and then worked very hard afterwards

Gorilla Gardening with Anna Doeser of the BCTV

Natasha from HSBC with the pupils of HWINS being photographed by Niall O'Mara from the Richmond and Twickenham Times.

Will we, won't we? That was the question of the moment as soon as the snow was forecast at the weekend. I spent many minutes looking at the weather and trying to work out what to do. The Tree Council (who gave us the grant to buy the trees), wanted us to plant in National Tree Week but not to the detriment of the plants and the English Woodlands Nursery (Thanks Jo!) was delivering the trees the day before the big dig so if we didn't plant them, who would and when? Before Christmas or in Jan/Feb when the ground would most likely be more frozen!! What should we do??!!

So this morning it was snowing and it was cold. But did that stop us from planting 15 new trees?? No Siree!!

Most of the HSBC staff from the Kingston Bridge branch volunteered to plant up the new trees for the wilderness. Thank you to Richard Gimblett for letting his team of Matt Wilshaw, Paul Jaggers, Natasha Munro, Fedele Dechiara, Ross Qualters, Sheetal Verma, Rasher Zaater, Jenny Montgomery, Mark Steedman, Mark Poole and Sarah Leech come along for the day and plant up the wilderness. We would not have been able to do it without them. Thanks Peter for organising with HSBC again.

The Parents from both Hampton Wick (Abid Ikram, Alison McNaughton, Zhen and Leiske) and St Johns (Caroline Sayer) also came and the Rev Jerry just came for lunch but we still enjoyed having him too. (No really ... he worked hard all afternoon.)

And the Gorilla Gardeners from the BCTV Anna Doeser and Steve. Who brought all their tools and knowledge.

It was a great, if cold day and I hope all the trees appreciate that we planted them with care, manure, bonemeal and give us a good display in the spring.

Trees planted were:

2 Wild Cherries (Prunus avium)

3 Comman Alders (Alnus glutinosa)

2 Field Maples (Acer campestre)

1 Pedunculate Oak (Quercus rober) In the future in my mind I see this as a huge tree with a tree house around it.

2 Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia)

1 Disease Resistant Elm (Ulmus lutece)

3 Hornbeams (Carpinus betulus)

1 Aspen (Populus tremula)

Next projects will be hedging the perimeter and then planting up the pond. Dates to follow. See you then?

www.redscapedesign.co.uk

Logs, Logs Glorious Logs (and Mud)

Designed with nature in mind

Beautiful detailing, well done KEN!!!!

Look at that curve!!

Half made logstack

Now I know I am a wilderness bore but the logstacks are going to look so amazing once completed. The first one is in and thanks to Matthew Morey and his team at Aerzen who put together the frames for the stacks to sit in and also to our lovely regular landscape artist, Ken Daly. Andy Goldsworthy has nothing on him!! Well... apart from the millions of pounds.

Ken has worked so hard and did an extra two days over his allotted time to get the first stack finished. I cannot thanks him enough for bringing my plans to life so successfully.

He will be doing a demonstration session on the 1st of December when we have our big tree planting day in the wilderness, so if you want to have a go, please come along.

As well as the logstacks coming along, we had another brush with fame when the Richmond and Twickenham Times came in again to see the kids planting bluebells and pond dipping, even though there was nothing in the pond to dip at the moment (minor details!).

www.redscapedesign.co.uk

Community Bluebell Planting and yes it was the whole community!!!

BCTV Volunteers

HSBC Volunteers

Keep Digging Reverend!!

First injury of the Day, Katie with a nettle sting

There are so many people in our school that have the ability and the drive to make things happen. Peter Greenwood is one of them. He is a dad who happens to work at HSBC and because of him the richmond HSBC managers came on a team building day (so much better than the SPA day they had intended to go on!) in the wilderness to help us to prepare the area for planting of bluebells (English Bluebells, Hyacinthoidies non-scripta of course).

BUT not only did we have 11 of the best of the HSBC (Peter, Mick, Ali, Mark, Catherine, Andy, Harpreet, Katie, Liz, Joy and Simon) , but we also had another 14 of the BCTV (British Conservation Trust Volunteers: Dan, Laura, Steve, Simon, Anna, Iain, Heather, John, Kevin, Aneel, Nick, Dans, Richard and Keith.) who not only volunteered but we had 3 of them leading the exercise with myself and also making available all their tools.

We also had The Rev Graham and Jerry and their friend Jane and the many parents that turned up including, Lucy (Great with a wheelbarrow), Alison, Lindsay, Suzy, Liska (hope I have spelt it correctly), Liz, Anne and Kate, as well as all my family including children, husband and not least my mum.

It was a truly community effort and we had the most beautiful November day that actually felt like Spring.

We managed to prepare the ground and plant 1500 bulbs.

Today the job was finished off by the pupils of the school who all came in class by class and managed to plant the rest of the 3000 bulbs we had for our Bluebell carpet.

The Richmond and Twickenham Times came in to document this and to make sure that the rest of the community also know what we are doing and trying to achieve.

Phase 2.1 is complete! Apart from the few bulbs that were left over for the children who were ill today and called in to the school in tears as they were missing their chance to plant bulbs and be part of the wilderness. What a lovely thing that they care so much!

Tree planting day will be Wed Dec 1st!! Keep the day free, Please!

www.redscapedesign.co.uk

The Hiatus is over

Bluebells to be planted here

The Pond with beach and the deck taking shape

Jeff the Carpenter

Phewweee I have managed to get back to blogging. There are too many passwords in my head and for a few days they all eluded me. Anyway now back on track and so is the wilderness.

The wilderness, from a whirlwind of activity, ended up a couple of days ago with no one on site. But our lovely contractors have managed to pull it back a little and will be finished by this weekend. It's on record now so lets see if it happens Ken!

The beach is forming and the deck is going down so my mind has been working on ordering English bluebells for the front of the site. There is a wilderness action day at the beginning of Nov , just after half term, to plant these, so I have to get them ordered for delivery by then.

And we have tree planting week at the beginning of December so I also have to get the trees ordered for that with all the accoutrements and making sure it all fits into the agreement set out by the Tree Council as they had promised us a grant. There is a lot of red tape and a great deal of juggling with money to make sure we come in on budget.

Wish me luck!

www.redscapedesign.co.uk