Thursday 10th August 2023

Sit Down !

Another lovely sunny day that started with a little bit of flat pack assembly.

A generous donor and a friend of the arboretum, who wishes to remain anonymous, kindly delivered a couple of very nice two seater benches.

The benches were personally delivered on Wednesday afternoon and safely stored in the classroom overnight.

Come the morning our volunteers were pleasantly surprised to find that Santa Claus had come early, and eagerly unwrapped and assembled our wonderful presents.

Two benches, two teams and some friendly rivalry meant that the benches were efficiently put together in short order.

It only remained to deliver them to their chosen place - the perfect spot, as requested by the donor, and with my complete agreement.

Beside the path, opposite the recently cleared area, underneath our European Hornbeam. The adults now have comfy benches to sit on while the children have the cut logs under the tree. A little resting place before the final hill up to the car park.

A big thank you to our mystery donor

Wild Meadow 2

Having seen how much insect life is attracted and supported by our small wild meadow area it has become a general goal to increase the amount of meadow contained in the arb.

A good second candidate is a small area of manicured lawn at the bottom end of the arboretum just before the lime trees.

First task was to reduce the height of the lawn grass to the lowest setting on the lawnmower. This increases the chance of any seed dispersed over this area coming into contact with the soil and successfully germinating.

The long tall grasses at the back were cut down and strewn across the target area.

Hopefully seed from these cuttings will fall through and take in the coming weeks.

We have some thistles and ragwort at the back, which we would encourage, as well as any other seed heads which we can now collect from various other places in the arboretum.

The opportunity to clear saplings and growth around another of our nearby specimen trees was too great to resist. We finished by unveiling our Hawthorn tree to the general public.

Another pleasantly sunny and productive day