Enfield Conservation Volunteers
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Enfield Conservation Volunteers |
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JANUARY 2003
Sunday 5th
Trent Country Park
After the enforced idleness of Christmas & the New Year, our first task of 2003 gave us all much needed exercise.
Returning to the Williams Wood pond in Trent Country Park (which we last visited in 1993) 7 of us put in a hard day’s work removing logs and other debris, & cutting back much of the rhododendron which over the past 10 years had spread rapidly and was encroaching upon the pond. Opening up the area to the light should we hope, be of benefit to both plant & wildlife.
A cold but brilliantly sunny day drew out many people seeking a breath of fresh air & more than one showed an interest in what we were doing and expressed approval of our efforts. We even gained a potential new recruit – not a bad start to the year!
Bob Phillips
Sunday 19th
Grovelands Park
Grovelands Park is the venue for this weekends conservation task, an urban park situated neatly between Southgate, Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill. We’re working in the wooded area of the park, coppicing Hornbeam trees, a very hard wood, which are traditionally coppiced for use in woodwork (but were also used for faggots for the bakeries as it burns at a high temperature). Coppicing is where a healthy tree is cut down to within a few inches (6 to 12 depending upon the particular tree) of the ground, which does not kill the tree but encourages it to sprout several new shoots. Each then grows into a slender tree after a few years, ready for re-coppicing and use. The cycle of coppicing and re-growth is then repeated for many years or even centuries, although has tended to die out as a commercial exercise in most parts of the country. The cut trees were then laid in an informal barrier around the coppiced trees to encourage people, dogs and other animals from disturbing the new growth. Eight volunteers (plus a Park Ranger of course) were in attendance.
Robin Herbert
FEBRUARY 2003
Sunday 2nd
Trent Country Park
After an absence of more than 10 years, Enfield Conservation Volunteers returned to the Water Garden in Trent Country Park to carry out a further removal of reeds and other aquatic vegetation from the larger of the two ponds.
Bearing in mind the blizzard conditions which virtually paralysed the south-east of the country two or three days earlier, we were agreeably surprised to find the Water Garden bathed in sunshine and the ponds completely ice-free. The fine weather brought out the crowds and for most of the day we had an appreciative audience as we dragged out the reeds, logs and branches etc and barrowed them away. By late afternoon we had created a small mountain of debris and opened up a fair amount of clear water.
All around the Water Garden small clumps of snowdrops were in full bloom alongside dwarf daffodils, which would soon be coming into flower. The two bridges, which we built a year earlier, in 1991, were looking good and the wisteria, which we had trained along the larger bridge, was thriving.
There were 8 of us involved, and hopefully some of us will still be around for the next clean up in the year 2013!
Bob Phillips
Sunday 16th
Covert Way
This date was scheduled for work on a recently formed conservation area in Duchy Road, but when the volunteers arrived, they found that the site had been transformed into a neat municipal shrub bed. Fortunately the task leader, David Smith, had an alternative up his sleeve, and relocated to the nearby Covert Way woodlands, where coppicing is undertaken each winter. The LB Enfield’s Groundforce volunteers had just spent some days coppicing a large area of the predominantly ash woodland, and ECV continued where they had left off.
Coppicing is a form of woodland management practised since ancient times. Originally it was done to provide a continuous supply of wood for construction, fuel and other wooden products. When the trees are felled near to the ground they resprout from the base, giving several stems which can be cut again in an approximately 15 year cycle. Under this system the trees are rejuvenated more or less indefinitely. The conservation value, which was once a fortunate by-product, is now the main reason such work is undertaken. Immediately after an area is felled, light is allowed into the forest floor, permitting plants to thrive which would otherwise have been shaded out. At any given rime, different sections of the woods are at different stages of regrowth, each area creating a slightly different habitat for wildlife.
ECV’s work today was three-fold: clearing spoil that remained from earlier work; reducing the height of some stumps so that regrowth could start from closer to the ground; and felling more trees to increase the open area. Some of the thinner stems were used to strengthen and extend a dead hedge surrounding the coppice and the rest were fed into a bonfire, while thicker trunks were put into log piles.
The six volunteers enjoyed the day so far as to be quite grateful that the Duchy Road site was unavailable.
Steve Mathieson
MARCH 2003
Sunday 2nd
Forty Hall
Lake Clearance - In front of Forty Hall house lies the main ornamental lake. Its main use seems to be a platform for feeding bread to the many ducks using the lake. There are two islands on the lake used in the spring by nesting ducks. One island has a Willow tree that was getting too large and needed coppicing. Two ECV members rowed out to the tree overhanging the lake from the island and set about their task for the day. Newton’s laws of motion were proved when it was found that a forward motion on a bow saw causes a backward motion on the boat! Four other members set about clearing some trees on the bank of the lake that would cause problems later if left untouched. An overall successful day that will require a repeat visit to coppice some tress that could not be touched with the time available.
John Mayo
Sunday 16th
Pymmes Park
An island on the lake has been more or less adopted by ECV for conservation work at Pymmes Park, but this was the team’s first visit to the island for three years, largely due to the lottery funded renovation work which had been going on. Indeed, even now the lake surface consisted of mud rather than water, but the serendipitous builder’s planks got the volunteers and their equipment across the morass.
Once there, the work continued as on previous visits : felling regrowth from invasive sycamores, norway maples and laburnum and using much of the wood so produced to repair and extend the dead hedges around the bank (The original dead hedges appeared a bit the worse for wear after the capital works and this had allowed more of the wildfowl to trample down any plants around the island’s edge).
The six volunteers made a major difference to the habitat of the island and with any luck, on our next visit we will again require a ferry service.
Steve Mathieson
Sunday 30th
Trent Country Park
The battle to suppress the invasive sycamore resumed. Seven volunteers split into two groups, the first group winching out the stumps of trees that had previously been cut down. As some of these trees had been fairly large, the roots were equally large and proved quite resilient to the efforts of men and winch. A secondary attack was made to loosen the soil around the roots with mattocks and spades and with each pull on the winch this process continued. Eventually the great root balls emerged and left giant craters in the ground which had to be filled in for safety. The second group cut back the next section of sycamores to within four feet of the ground. This will prevent them coming into leaf this year and so more light will get to the ground to enable ground cover plants to grow. These stumps will be removed on a future visit to the site. And so it goes on.......
Judy Mayo
APRIL 2003
Sunday 13th
Grovelands Park
Robin Herbert
Sunday 27th
Trent Country Park
Due to circumstances beyond our control, we were unable to carry out our scheduled task, repairs to a footbridge in the New Fields area of the park. Instead, we loaded up the winch, mattocks and a few bow saws and spent a useful and enjoyable day in the Nature Trail woodland continuing our battle against the ever-invasive sycamore. Eight of us, including one new member, took part.
Bob Phillips
MAY 2003
Sunday 11th
Trent Park
As there will be no Steam and Country Show at Trent Park this year, and John & Judy will be away when the Autumn Show at Town Park is on, a book sale was held at Trent Park to raise funds. A quite respectable £54.83 was raised.
Sunday 25th
Whitewebbs Park
JUNE 2003
Sunday 8th
Trent Country Park
Since the completion of the fencing around the Nature Trail Woodland in Trent Country Park, one particular section has regularly been vandalised by people seeking a short cut to the lake.
Tired of constantly having to carry out repairs (to say nothing of the expense) we reluctantly decided, with the approval of the Park Manager, to allow people the quick and easy access they obviously wanted. To do this we removed the rails and stock fencing in the affected section and installed in their place a kissing gate with an enlarged "A” frame sufficiently wide to accommodate children’s buggies.
Hopefully this will now solve the problem and ECV will be free to concentrate on more pressing work elsewhere. Six of us were involved in the day’s task.
Bob Phillips
Sunday 22nd June & Sunday 20th July 2003
Forty Hall
The fishing lakes at the northern end of Forty Hall by Turkey Brook are fed by a man made stream that runs partly parallel to Turkey Brook. The de-silting of the stream was ECV’s task for the day. Ten volunteers turned up on 22nd June including four students from Latymer School. Fine silt about two feet thick needed some specialised techniques to remove it. The boys decided that their bare hands were the best way! We are not sure their mothers agreed when they saw them. A more traditional method was to wear waders and shovel the silt out onto the banks. The silt is left on the bank to allow any creatures that may exist in it to return to the stream. As the water got deeper it was clear there are fish and frogs living there. A mud rake with the tines covered also proved useful in depositing mud on the bank.
Eight people were mad enough to return on 20th July to continue the task. With the basic techniques established a large section of the stream was de-silted. The task is not completed another joyful day will be required here to finish it.
John Mayo