Lou and I were joined today by five volunteers,  for two of them it was their first time volunteering with the Parks team at Ivybridge Town Council. 

In just a few hours we had cleared a large area of the scrub and opened up the understory of the willow and hazel thicket running along the access track leading to Filham Park. Removing dense scrub allows light into the understory of the trees, all the trees will regrow and will benefit from being coppiced. The cut material was put back into the undergrowth as habitat piles.

On Saturday 30^th October, Devon Rural Skill Trust will be running a hedge laying day along this access track, laying the hedge on the allotment side. When laying a hedge the process creates a lot of arising, another reason to cut back the scrub we did today is to create space to lay these brash arising into.

We have a couple of Wildflower meadow creation days next week, on Tuesday at MacAndrews Field and Thursday at Filham Park. These tasks are open to all ages. If you’d like to talk about today’s task, or getting involved with future tasks, then please don’t hesitate to contact me at andrewprice@ivybridge.gov.uk