Sunday, 4th October 2015 saw the official and formal opening of the Woodlands to the public. After some 4 years in the making, we saw blue skies and glorious sunshine greet some 350 people through our gate.
The opening ceremony was presided over by the newly elected MP for Greenwich & Woolwich, Matthew Pennycook.
Our last volunteer session was on September 5th. Rain and dark clouds didn’t make a promising start, but we had 7 people today, including a first time volunteer! The focus today was to put in more steps for the internal path and more weeding and tidying up of the access routes inside the woodland in preparation for our Grand Public Opening on Sunday 4th October.
Volunteers standing in front of newly created steps.
The photos show volunteers standing in front of our newly constructed steps. The steps now start near the recently added gate next to the Seren Park Gardens car part and are almost at the top of the woodland, where the topography flattens out.
Today’s volunteer day was the first of 2 planned sessions for June, taking advantage of the warm weather and to build on by far the most important activity the organisation has seen for some time. It has been our aim since we started to have improved access facilities to the woodland from the western side, and as a result of many hours of planning, today marked the first volunteer day where we can use our newly installed gate for access.
Volunteers going off to work!
Our Sunday morning session started at the Lasseter Close side of the woodland. On a hazy and humid morning we assessed that further weeding, path clearance and additional removal on non-native species would be today’s aims.
Part of this morning’s activity involved the further removal of non-native species. As the woodland is surrounded on all sides by people’s gardens, it’s inevitable that plants sometimes find their way in to the woodland area. Some may have arrived accidentally, others may have been deliberately planted for ornamental affect.
Some of today’s volunteers standing in The Glade area.
Overcast skies with a potential drop of rain didn’t discourage eight Westcombe Woodland members from turning up in the morning at our Maze Hill entrance to commence another volunteer day. When the skies cleared, warm sunshine greeted us to see how the woodland is progressing in mid Spring. The main aim of today’s visit was more weed clearing in the “Glade” area. The recent warm days with increasing amount of sunlight, along with the rain has encouraged invasive brambles to grow at quite a rate. Further willowherb and other weeds were also cleared from around the glade area.
Spring was definitely in the air for the woodland’s 2nd volunteer day of the year. Blue skies and sunshine greeted the 9 volunteers in the morning.
Tools of the trade!
This morning work’s main aim on the Maze Hill side of the woodland was to undertake weed control. Previous volunteer days have shown that within just 4 or 5 weeks bramble and common nettle seeds are widely present in the top soil, and that digging over these areas allow fresh plants to germinate.
