Thursday 23rd April 2026 - Beddington Park. We marked a very special day celebrating 20 years of our most long-standing, reliable and knowledgeable volunteer. What a role model!
And we enjoyed the beautifully decorated home-made cake of course.
Thursday 23rd April 2026 - The team numbers swelled with the addition of two more new volunteers as a Sunny day of work got underway at Beddington Park.
With the main bulk of work occurring at the Lakeside Meadow the larger portion of the team, as the main photo attests, could be found on their knees whilst the tractor looped around them making a spring grass cut as they weeded out Thistles and Docks and planted up a small batch of Cowslips.
Further from the main site of activities the remainder of the volunteers set about rationalising the spread of a couple of compost heaps before the tractor arrived with a fresh batch of cuttings and then made a short walk to the Stock Pond where the periphery of the remaining Bramble was pushed back from the fence and bankside trees to neaten things up.
Tuesday 21st April 2026 - With a work experience student out with the fair sized turnout of a team, the volunteers spent the day in the Western boundary of Roundshaw Downs.
Even though the day remained bright a cutting wind blew across the downs as the team sprang into action.
As the Tractor and flail collector kept busy cutting the surrounding parcels of grassland the rest of the team got to grips with liberating trees and a general push-back of Bramble on the grass edges, weeded Cleavers and more Bramble from the midst's of a large patch of Wood Avens and playing somewhat of a long game dug out as much emergent Hog Weed as they could on the grassland to give the more desirable species a fighting chance of spreading.
Tuesday 16th April 2026 - Todays outing for the team saw them carrying out works along the new Wandle Public Open Space adjacent to Wandle Valley Wetland as well as visiting Spencer Road Wetland to clear a bit of large and small scale littering.
With an early division of the team both ends of the Wandle Valley development got a thorough picking over of undesirable plant species from in the midst of rarer species that have been planted up and seeded.
Moving to Spencer Road once work had been completed, larger items of fly tipped rubbish were hauled from the flowing waters of the Wandle whilst smaller specimens and a couple of larger tree trunk sections were removed from the weir before a full blockage could develop.
Tuesday 14th April 2026 - It was a warm welcome back to one of the stalwart volunteers after a couple of months absence as the team now back to full strength set to work on a sunlit Carshalton Road Pastures.
As the tractor and flail dashed to and fro over the site performing a spring grass cut, the volunteers were afforded a degree of protection from the sharp chilly wind blowing across the site by using their voluminous turnout to push back straggling Bramble from the field dividing boundary to the open grassland left untouched a couple of weeks ago.
