|
It takes a lot of hard
work to look after 40 acres of ancient woodland, meadows, ponds and
an arboretum. But that's just what the CCAA helpers do. They're
volunteers from Chilworth village, the Science Park, the University
and Chilworth Manor and they've made great progress over the last
few months:
- The Conservation
Meadow is famous for its diversity of fauna and flora but is
suffering from overgrowth of grasses and thistles. We are combatting
this by cutting and baling the vegetation. The bales will be used to
make compost heaps on the edge of the woodland to encourage
invertebrates and the vertebrates, such as reptiles, that feed on
them.
- The Arboretum had
become overgrown with native saplings, rhododendron, laurel and
bracken. Over recent months, we've made much progress in
suppressing bracken growth and we can now keep it under control with
our recently-purchased ride-on mower.
- In the past the
Arboretum was famous for the beauty of its azaleas, especially in
the Azalea Walk. This area has
now been much improved by pruning and removal of dead wood and
bracken and will shortly be opened out further. With the help of the
Rhododendron Society, we are also trying to identify all the
varieties of Azalea and Rhododendron present.
- The conservation
area is often used for teaching school students about ecology and
conservation. We've been given a Community Fellowship Grant of
GBP2000 from the University of Southampton which we'll use to
encourage greater biodiversity in our ponds. We'll also install a
dipping platform to make it safer for school students to carry out
pond studies.
Work on the
Conservation Area and Arboretum mostly takes place over the autumn
and winter at weekends. It's a very stimulating and sociable
activity and we invite our readers to give it a try! We're happy
to keep volunteers informed of our programme of work by email and
any contribution, even a few hours is very welcome.
Please contact Don
Fox on 023 8076 7420 or enquiries@science-park.co.uk if you would like to know
more about our work.
|
