The initial garden creation phase is complete save for commissioning the
sign.
The meadow is sown and watered. The gates into the garden are
completed and the fire escape path from the small meeting room has
been realigned to improve safety. There have regular maintenance visits

during April and May by the Nature Group members to water the new
plants and shrubs, and a volunteer day where the meadow area was
prepared for seeding and the areas around the new plantings were weeded.
A social celebration event for all the volunteers is being planned.
The five year maintenance plan for the garden is in preparation, drawing
on best practice documents from conservation and horticultural bodies.
The nature group would like to thank the Parish Council for their support
over the past year, and look forward to next.
Kathryn Fletcher

 

Full green ahead for the nature garden!
The verdict on progress in the nature garden is in! Alex Little, the
horticulturalist who kindly provided the original designs, declared it the
eighth wonder of the world, or at least I think that’s what he said. There
was a helicopter flying over at the time.
One thing Alex was unequivocally complimentary about was the volunteer
posse who came to plant up the perennials a few weeks back. He was
impressed to see so many taking part – encouraged by some glorious
sunshine!
If you’re taking a stroll in the garden, you’ll see the individual plants are
quite small, but (Alex noted) this gives them an advantage over larger potgrown specimens which may have become over-accustomed to their pot and
fail to flourish when released into the wild. Ours should develop fairly fast
as we go from spring to summer, and adapt well to their new surroundings.
Inevitably there’ll be a few failures – the gooseberries in particular seem a
bit reluctant – but in the long run we’ll have more robust stock.
Preparing the wildflower meadow
It was hard to miss the display of wildflowers outside Autumn Leaves (at the
bottom of the High Street) last year. We’re hoping to replicate that in the
nature garden. The secret? Really thorough preparation. Wildflower
seedlings can’t compete with a thick thatch of grass, so it’s important to
remove as much of the green stuff as possible. Not forgetting to bury a dung
-filled cow horn under a new moon …
To this end if you’re using a mini-digger at any point in the next few weeks
could we borrow it for an hour to level off the ground? Then we’ll be ready
to rotovate.
On 23 April we’d like your help raking the bare soil to create a very fine
tilth. If conditions are right (i.e. not too windy) we’ll be able to sow and
tread in. Come along from 10am if you can – there’ll be cake!
Signing off
The last stage of establishing the garden will involve putting in a sign, a
wooden bench, and a new gate near the bus stop. There’s also a dead hedge
under construction in the woodland section – dry sticks piled between stakes
to create extra habitat – and more mulch-spreading to do.
If you want to get involved, or have ideas for events or new features, please
email us: support@nature.garden.co.uk Otherwise, go ahead and enjoy the
space as the fancy takes you. Hopefully there’ll be lots to see and enjoy.
Kieron
On behalf of the Nature Garden Volunteers
kieronhumph@gmail.com

Exciting news just in: the next order of plants for the nature garden is on its
way (from Bampton, west of Oxford – we keep it local if we can). This time
it’s a bumper batch of more than 400 perennials, including honeysuckle,
foxgloves, ferns, yarrow, bugloss and meadow crane’s bill.
We’d really appreciate your help getting these lovelies safely stowed in the
soil. You can volunteer on Saturday March 12 and Sunday March 11 from 10
am.
This is the last big push (can you tell I’ve been watching This is going to
hurt) to get the greenery in the garden established, coupled with
wildflower seed-sowing next month.
After that there’s a new gate and a sign to install, and the garden will be
ready to receive visitors! Obviously it’ll take a while for the plants to get
established, but there are already bulbs poking through and buds on the
hedging plants.
Another welcome sighting earlier this month was a mistle thrush chortling in
the chestnut. I’m told one of its nicknames is the ‘stormcock’ because it
starts trying to pair up before winter is properly over. It’s on the British
Trust for Ornithology’s red list of birds of conservation concern, so let’s
hope it finds the food and habitat it needs locally.
Verging on the meticulous
Cutting verges costs a lot of money and turns a potentially productive strip
of land into a desert, albeit a green one.
In recognition of this, miniature roadside nature reserves have been
springing up all over the country, including about a dozen across
Oxfordshire. Have you spotted one? They’re a great way to support
pollinator populations and cut down on the bills we have to pay through our
council tax.
Now our county councillor, Sally Povolotsky, is working to make it easier to
arrange for verge-mowing operations to be suspended, and for local groups
to manage the land in a more sustainable way. Chilton Road is a good
candidate for this in our area. Turning the verge (on the left as you go up
the hill) into a bank of flowers and longer grasses would be relatively
straightforward and safe to do as there’s no longer traffic there.
We’d need to wait until the road closure works are complete before starting
work, but if there’s support for the idea then at least we could kick off a
discussion. If you’re interested in getting involved please let me know at
kieronhumph@gmail.com
Kieron

Upton Nature Garden Volunteers.
Not too many people will be shedding a tear for the end of 2021, I suspect,
but what a year for nature in Upton! We received funding for the nature
garden, broke ground in September and planted bulbs in October with the
help of loads of village volunteers. Meanwhile in the overflow cemetery we
sowed wildflowers and a flying squad from a local firm planted a 90 metre
hedge in the middle of a gale.
What does this add up to? Well, it depends what you want to measure.
According to long-standing convention, economic growth is the only scale
worth paying attention to. If it doesn’t increase GDP, it isn’t worth the
candle. But this is to ignore all the soft benefits that an activity brings – and
any harmful collateral. Quick example: going for a walk generates no
revenue, no margin, but it contributes to the walker’s health and maybe
their happiness, without causing any pollution – as long as they didn’t drop
any litter while they were out.
Let’s take a closer look at the balance sheet for the environmental projects
in Upton:
Plants and materials provided a bit of income for suppliers, but the labour
was all about love, not money, so economically there’s not much to report.
When it comes to environmental impact the calculations get interesting.
Initially there are carbon emissions from transport of goods and people to
consider. But over the course of the, say minimum 30 years we’d expect the
hedges, shrubs and trees to grow, the capture rate (according to experts at
https://ecotree.green) averages at 25kg of carbon a year. That’s the
equivalent of the emissions a new car produces over a distance of 125 miles
(www.nimblefins.co.uk for the calculation). And since we’ll have put in
more than 600 trees when everything’s planted, we’ll be safely in the black.
Then there’s the direct contribution to nature: food and habitat for
creatures that wouldn’t otherwise have had the necessary. With the
potential to harbour thousands of species, a single hedge is a pretty
phenomenal ecosystem. Adding one means a net gain for nature – and
indeed for humans since one of the nature garden’s hedges is edible, with
fruit and berries for jams, jellies and syrups if you’re that way inclined.
And what about the contribution to community? Gathering people with a
common purpose is definitely valuable, although I’m not sure what metric
you’d use. And finally the business of enjoying the end result: bud-burst or
birdsong or butterfly-flight. Again, hard to quantify. And maybe that’s the
point. If the uncountable stuff – birdsong or bud-burst or bumblebee drone –
disappears one day, it won’t affect the economy, but it will affect all of us.
Kieron Humphrey kieronhumph@gmail.com

We’re thrilled to report exciting and momentous progress towards supporting nature in our village. This weekend just past, villagers and other volunteers have planted 2500 bulbs and laid out the paths in the nature garden. This means that next spring there’ll be nectar for the early emerging bees – generally queen bumbles looking for food so they can build strength to find a nesting site – and a way to walk around the garden to get a look at the flowers and who they’re feeding.

So thank you to everyone who took part (all the more so if you stayed when it rained) from the toddlers to the elders, from the experts to the newbies, from the diehards to the sceptics – you made it a great community gathering and set the bar high for future volunteer events.

As it happens, our volunteer weekend was also the start of CO26 in Glasgow. Basically the last ditch attempt by the international community to arrest climate change. It’s worth noting that as the deliberations kicked off we were planting up a green space that will absorb carbon as well as providing other benefits.

Hedging our bets

Even though I’ve been devouring ‘A natural history of the hedgerow’ by John Wright, I still haven’t fathomed why we say “hedging our bets”. Is it to do with steeplechasing? Or investing in land? Please advise. What I do know is the next stage of the nature garden involves planting hedges.

Small at first, these unprepossessing stalks will develop into beautiful berry-laden, species-rammed, carbon-digesting chambers of greenfulness. Hedges, amazingly, can host thousands of species of plant, animal, lichen and fungus, and while we may not see them all, they all contribute to the ecosystem. It’ll be a while before we get to serious levels of biodiversity, but the main thing is to get started.

We’ll be planting wildlife-targeted hedge plants along the fence adjoining Station Road, and across the garden near the seating area. These hedges will provide habitat for pollinators and birds. The border with the rec stretching from the village hall to the fence adjoining Beeching Close will be planted with ‘edible’ hedging – plants bearing berries and fruits which can be used for jams, syrups, and other home uses, which was a recommendation from County Councillor Sally Povolotsky who generously allocated funding to the garden.

To get these hedges planted, along with shrubs for the woodland area, we really need your help (again!) later this month. We don’t know dates yet because we have to wait for the supplier to say when they can deliver. But if you’re willing and able when the time comes, please don’t be shy.

 

Upton Nature Garden Volunteers