Southway staff get stuck in at local green spaces
As part of Southway's 15th birthday celebration events, the Age Friendly and Development teams recently ditched their desks for the day and got their gardening gloves on with Urban Ranger, Debbie Wallace.
The Age Friendly team spent the day at the Darley Avenue Green Flag site where they created a Big Blue Bee Bed.
This involved installing hand-made cleft oak fencing, created bespoke for us by Twiggy, a coppice worker and traditional greenwood wood expert. The team then prepared the ground, ensuring any worms were kept safe ready to be returned, and planted 90 blue flowered plants and bulbs. Within 10 minutes of planting, the first Common Carder Bumblebee arrived and started feeding on the Caryopteris flowers.
The team even managed to find the time in between all of this to scarify one of the existing bulb areas on the site to prepare the ground for sowing wildflowers, raking up an impressive 30 sacks of grass!
The Development team spent a day at Wintermans Road on the Arrowfield Estate to create phase two of the woodland there.
For the last two and a half years autumn leaves from the Arrowfield Estate have been collected in a leaf cage. The team dug out the leaf mould, which is used for enriching the ground for planting, and made room for this year’s leaves.
'Dead hedges' were created from weaving branches and twigs to provide great places for wildlife to shelter in and mesh screens, filled with dead stems and plant prunings, were put in place along the fence to keep the invertebrates happy.
Some of the woodlands existing woodchip was moved to prepare the ground for planting, whilst additional woodchip was added to other areas. Even when the rain started, the many barrows of wood chip were still on the move!
The rain did not stop the planting preparations either and 1,000 Bluebells were planted for a spring display next year.
How can I get involved?
If you’re a member of the local community and you’d like to volunteer with projects on these green spaces, please email Urban Ranger, Debbie Wallace at d.Wallace@southwayhousing.co.uk.