A really good turnout for today’s volunteer morning, lots of new faces and interest in becoming members of the group. It’s always better when there’s some blue sky and sunshine!

A lesser celandine, a common early flowering woodland plant.

Two important tasks started today were our regular activity, bramble clearance and creating a better and safer route from the main Glade down towards the back of Seren Park.

Volunteer Jeremy clearing the fast-growing bramble.

The bramble was threatening to drown out the bluebells and primroses in the Oak Glade. It’s still early in the year but it’s fantastic to see primroses in flower, and tree leaves staring to unfurl. The pond is fully topped with water, which is always good to see.

As part of the recent volunteer morning, last Sunday (6th March) also saw a great effort to open up the woodlands behind Seren Park Gardens to allow better access to the area.

A small, stepped path was started – as can be seen in the accompanying photos – which will also allow for safer tree inspections. It’s necessary that the trees in the woodland are regularly inspected for damage, especially following on from recent storms. Better future access will also make it easier for better future maintenance of the area directly north-east of the Glade area.

Our penultimate volunteer day of the year was, thankfully, a lot drier than the October afternoon’s Open Day! Before we even entered the woodland we were confronted with the entrance car park of Seren Park Gardens several leaves thick. This presented an opportunity for taking the leaves and adding these to our composting bin. From the below photo what looked like a 20 minute job for 1 person ended up taking almost all of the volunteer event and with 4 or 5 people. The photos below show the leaves in the car park, bags of leaves ready to be taken to the compost bin and the compost bin which at the end of the day was overflowing.

Seren Car Park’s display of leaves, perfect for our compost bin.

In addition to harvesting leaves for valuable mulch products, volunteers and committee members also continued to work on our project to provide additional rain-run off from The Glade area which will feed, via a channel at the back of the beehives, the pond with extra rainwater. As well as supplying extra rainwater, the soil will be damper than the surrounding area as a result of a trench being currently dug and lined with a waterproof liner. The photo below shows the liner being positioned, ready for nutrient-poor soil to be dropped in place.

The below photo shows the pond being full of water as well as a covering of pondweed. In the next few weeks, the excess vegetation will need to be removed.

Finally, the results of the bees’ work have again produced several dozen pounds of locally produced honey. Jars were placed on sale and were already selling well. Profits go back into the general funds to help keep and maintain the woodland.

The morning started with the usual flurry of activity in getting the woodland up to standard. Paths were swept of dead leaves, and as you can see below, a loose step in the area of The Mound was repaired. Tidying up in the main Glade area started so that tables of food, drinks and activities for the afternoon could take place were also undertaken.

The apples this year showed promise, but compared with 2 years ago, the harvest was slim. Even the reliable Bramley trees produced only a modest few.

However, everyone’s mobile phones were the hot topic of conversation around midday, with our weather apps showing torrential solid rain coming in from around the moment we should have opened the woodlands to our guests. And unfortunately, they were correct! From just before 2pm, the heavens opened and down came the rain. We have only had to abandon our volunteer mornings and Open day events on a few occasions and this was one of them. By 3:30, after 4 brave people had come through the gates, we decided for safety and sanity to end the day. As you can see in the below photos of some of the plants in the woodland, all look wet! Let’s hope for better conditions in early May 2022 when it’s the early Spring Open Day.