Green Phoenix 27th to
28th October 2012
For the first residential of the new academic year we found
ourselves at Green Phoenix again!
Saturday & Sunday
Arriving
bright and early we were all keen to get started as soon as possible to warm up
on this freezing Saturday morning. We
did a small amount of dead hedging (creating hedging from cut trees and
branches) before moving onto our main task of the day. Scott (the founder of Green Phoenix) wanted a
relatively untouched area of his site opening up to allow light in so that
mosses, ferns and grasses could establish themselves on the woodland floor,
making for a much more inviting habitat for wildlife. Whilst Scott used his chainsaw to fell the
larger trees we worked to billhook all the lower branches off of the trees up
to around 6ft and then chopped down smaller trees using axes, once again
placing all the felled materials into dead hedges. Another purpose for clearing the site was to
help open up space around a ditch that ran through the middle of the area we
were working in and to clean it out of debris so as to link it with other
ditches and habitats to help Green Phoenix’s water vole population.
Unfortunately,
an arctic weather front called a stop to our plans to camp overnight on the
site, as camping on frosted ground would have been uncomfortable...to say the
least. So we left for the warmth of home
and came back Sunday morning refreshed to find a very wet day of work ahead of
us – but on the bright side it wasn’t as cold!!
Carrying on our clearing work, in the same area, by midday we had helped
transform the once dark area into light filled woodland and the ditch that was
once only a trickle and full of debris was now happily flowing with water. So we moved onto billhooking trees in a small
surrounding area to, again, open up the woodland as much as possible to allow
light in.
If you would
like to know more about Green Phoenix and the work that Scott does or would
like to get involved please visit the sites below:
By Steph
James
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