07 June 2016

News from Albion Millennium Green

We started the year with an ambitious programme agreed at our AGM, and already we have doubled the number of volunteers coming forward for our regular second-Saturday-in-the-month workdays.

Our ‘Shared Vision’ involves enriching both nature and people’s experience and use of the Green, cultivating and nurturing the orchard keeping the Green tidy, providing signage and better information about the Green and, crucially, raising funds. The programme includes:

  • filling in the gaps in the railway path’s mixed species hedge with new plantings
  • renovating Privet hedges
  • planting perennial woodland edge and shade species
  • replacing self-seeded Sycamore with a Hazel coppice
  • in a proposed ‘natural play area’ 
  • replacing boundary Sycamores and chain-link tennis fencing with native broad leaved species
  • constructing a new pond with a low fence from materials found on site, to replace our existing pond, which had been damaged by large dogs piercing the membrane. The pond will be dug in August and its first day after completion will be marked by a lively Teatro Vivo procession
  • increasing the variety of native perennials in the flowering slope next to the area where the tennis clubhouse once stood
  • developing a fruiting hedge beside the labyrinth, with native species such as Blackthorn and Damson
  • creating a bee-friendly wildflower 'river' on the bank of a 15 meter section of curving pathway
  • creating a living roof for our new metal storage container, and insect habitats for the walls of the container
  • installing signage to guide people around the Green
  • Continuing to work with local schools, groups and organisations
  • improving the effective use of notices — possibly replacing them with weather-proof notice boards which are less vulnerable to vandalism.

In this year we are making a special appeal for funds to enable us to buy the equipment and materials needed to carry out this programme of work. Full details of our ‘Shared Vision’, the calendar of events for the year and how to donate can be found on our website: www.amgfriends.org.uk 

Article by By Ann Field
Photo: An emerging bluebell wood


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