The day was cold and there was a light dusting of snow on the ground. Although it initially looked like the cold was going to put our volunteers off, they slowly arrived in ones and twos so that by 10am we had a very respectable turn-out which included some new faces and young people.
There were two main tasks for us to get on with. The first was to remove the moss from an area of the heather bed which had been mown by the NT contractor. The reason for doing this is to allow the light and warmth to reach the heather seeds in the soil so that they germinate. The heather bed has been badly affected by heather beetle and it needs to be regenerated.
The raked moss was bagge
d up to be taken off site and composted, and then later used to grow more heather seedlings.
The area cleared can be seen in this picture as outlined. Please don’t trample it so that the heather seedlings are able to grow.
The group of volunteers was large enough to split into two teams. While one team worked on the heather bed the other team got on with the other task which was to tackled the gorse, brambles and rhododendrons encroaching on the barrow to the south-west of the Green. This was probably the last opportunity we had to carry out shrub cutting before the start of the nesting season.
A good morning’s work and good cake was had by all.