Members meet on the second Saturday of each month (except in August or the depth of winter). They do some of the jobs that the Borough or Parish Council would never budget for, creating the shrub border by the main entrance for instance, or pollarding overgrown willow trees, or wild flower planting, and endless clearing and tidying.
In the process new skills are acquired and friendships made, not a bad spin-off for a few hours exercise!
During 2011, the FRIENDS OF MEADOW PARK contributed 386 hours of voluntary work towards maintaining and improving the park.
N.B. All the work we do is in accordance with the requirements of the Management Plan drawn up by the Borough Council.
ACTIVITIES IN 2012
MONTHLY WORK PARTIES
January
There were 12 volunteers for the first work party of the year.
The task was to complete laying the eastern hedge between Little Meadow and Lagoon Field.
The hedge was laid and staked, using the stakes left over from our December session and those generated by coppicing hazel in Autumn 2010, the sort of recycling of material typical of traditional woodland management. There will be another example of this if, as suggested, the hedge is bound with binders generated from next month's proposed coppicing session.
A supplementary task was to remove some young cherry and ash trees that had been ring-barked by vandals, near the lagoon.
New hedge January 2012
Brewing up for a well-earned breather
February
There were 12 of us there today and we worked from 10 to just after 12.30. We cut back a major amount of scrub, and coppiced trees. In particular we cleared a great deal of bramble, which we were able to burn it on site. 3 people stayed longer to watch the fire until just after 1 o’clock.
There is now a lot more light getting into the area, but coppicing some hazel trees that we planned to do will have to wait for another day.
(Report from Kevin Gibbons)
March
It was an excellent morning's work, with a total of 19 volunteers.
It was decided to split roughly 1/3 to 2/3.
The larger group concentrated on the preparation and seeding of an area of exposed earth adjacent to the latest hedge laying in Little Meadow, leaving a space of approx 1 metre nearest the hedge, to allow for the natural germination of long-dormant seeds. After a lot of raking and breaking up, the rest of the ground, along with a few extra squares, was sown with appropriate wild flower seed ("hedge mixture" close in and "meadow mixture" in the more open area).
The remaining 1/3 were on log shifting detail, namely the sawn timber from the recent Kingston Brook Drainage Board maintenance exercise. We decided to move as much as possible away from the bank to prevent logs being despatched into the brook - we used them to build several Hibernacula (winter shelters) adjacent to the hedge. Hopefully with slight modifications they will be used by various little critters in coming years.
(From a report by Andy Denker)
Part-built hibernaculum in Play Field
April
It was our annual "SPRING CLEAN DAY", when we try to spruce up the park for the summer.
We had 14 volunteers, most of whom worked on this, including removing rubbish from the brook.
One person removed docks from the wildflower squares sown last year and sowed some hedgerow seed left over from the last activity day, while another two spread woodchippings (from the piles left after the recent work done by contractors for the Kingston Brook Internal Drainage Board) on to some large muddy areas on paths, for instance near the Bateman Road entrance.