Tuesday 17th March 2026 - The volunteers made their first return to Richmond Green since the river restoration works began to apply the final nuanced touches to start the botanical recovery.
Starting off at the re-profiled banks the team spent the greater part of the day installing temporary Chestnut fencing to deter footfall on the substrate of branches, logs and sand whilst it firms up naturally over the next few years, once the areas were sufficiently protected a good dusting of wild flower seed was also applied.
Up on the main verge which is destined to become a new crowning grassland, the tractor and rotavator was deployed to break up the compacted soil after the trampling by heavy machinery, churning up a lot of pebbles. The next mission saw the team sifting through this tumult to gather the stones which were then added to the river edges to aid up the firming and create aquatic habitat before a final bout of seeding to the grassland could be achieved.
Sunday 15th March - Memories of last months wet Task Day were distant as today's super size team assembled at a splendidly sunny Roundshaw Downs for a little more bramble control.
Thursday 10th October - It was a small but perfectly formed team who assembled for today's multiple tasks. First it was off to Beddington Park, to finish off Tuesday's green haying. Then to see how the professionals do things, it was a short minibus drive to Roundshaw Downs, to see the arrival of this year’s herd of Sussex Cattle as their start their seasonal job of assisting in the improvement of the largest piece of chalk grassland in Sutton. After lunch we headed to Sutton Common, a smaller and still embryonic piece of meadow in the making. Having recently secured some funding, the team were able to make the initial steps to changing the characteristics of the dominant plant species through a combination of management techniques.
Thursday 12th March 2026 - Having completed a two site trip on Tuesday the team upped the ante on todays activities and managed to squeeze in three, Wandle Edge, Riverbank Way and Cheam Rec.
The bright skies of two days ago had disappeared and chilly forceful winds could be heard in the creaking of trees as the fair turnout of volunteers set about their tasks.
Beginning at Wandle Edge the team was divided between the usual on site task of weeding out Nettles and other undesirables on the improving grassland and tidying up remnants of trees that that had been taken down and chipped by stacking logs and branches and condensing the spread of chippings on the open areas of land.
Keeping in roughly the same area and carrying over some of the same activities at Riverbank Way the banks were cleared of their batch of undesirable plant species before the team made the journey to the opposite area of the borough to install Cheam Rec's boundary marker's for this sites SFI areas.
Tuesday 10th March 2026 - Although the team numbers was on the slightly smaller side today two sites got the volunteers attention.
Kicking off todays bright Spring day at Cuddington Rec the troops were divided between two activities. As one division followed up the Bramble clearance to areas pushed back last year which had greened over nicely with grasses and opened up some other pinch-points of Bramble the remaining squad set about installing marker posts to the sites wild grass areas.
With some of the sites now in the SFI (Sustainable Farming Incentive) scheme, the smaller parcels of land on some of the bigger park-land sites need to be readily identifiable and the installation of small posts with reflective taping on the boundary limits seemed just the ticket, a practice continued at the next site on the tour, Perretts Field.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.