Aykley Heads
Sunday 18th February 2007
The Sites, Rangers and Ecology Team at the County Council invited Consoc to help plant trees at Aykley Heads, their new reserve-site that is only a short walk from the centre of town. We were building on work done by us and other groups to plant up the site with oak trees back in October. At the moment it is a field dotted with hundreds of tiny saplings, but in ten years time it should be a growing woodland, offering a valuable corridor for species to cross from one patch to the other. It was nice to be planting things, rather than strategically removing them and making fire, although that's cathartic in its own way...
This time we were creating an 'edge' effect by planting a wide range of other tree species including goat willow, broom, maple, rowan and hawthorn, at the border of a soon-to-be wildflower area that some of us were planting up with heather. It was a brilliant sunny day for it and the site offered great views of the city, positioned as it is just above the railway line. Despite a slow start we planted a lot of trees, had a nice leisurely lunch break, and right before we left the site three deer jumped the fence and ran across the field at full tilt. Which looked pretty cool, though they didn't hang about for photographs.
Pics will be up soon.
-Olivia x