The team here at Fort Royal is always looking for ideas to help the environment for wildlife and one of the great things about being in a community group is that we have wonderful residents on our doorstep and links to other groups who want to achieve the same things that we do. You may remember reading our urban oasis blog last year where I wrote about the mutual support and inspiration. Over the last 15 months, we’ve built on this and achieved even more.
Community action at Fort Royal
Photo by Karen O'Callaghan
Karen tells us how the Fort Royal team have been working with volunteers, local groups and residents to create better habitats for nature...
Photo by Karen O'Callaghan
An area we felt could do with improving was a shady area under a sycamore tree that’s full of cow parsley at this time of year. Thanks to one of our knowledgeable volunteers, Karen Humphries, who guided our work, one of the first activities the Rangers did here was to install a dead hedge. To our delight, the local wren can now often be seen enjoying that area. There are no shortages of fallen twigs in the park, which our local SEND students enjoy collecting and adding to the tree prunings left by the Council’s tree team. Due to their hard work, Karen has been able to construct two more dead hedges nearby. We relocated the gorse, which wasn’t thriving in the shady area, and have formed a hedge that we hope in time will deter local dogs from using this space as a toilet and disturbing the wildlife.
One thing we want to focus on this year is encouraging the birds as we had noticed our annual bird count figures were low. Julie from Worcestershire Wildlife Trust came along and suggested we needed mid-height planting and suggested contacting the Woodland Trust who offer free trees for groups such as ours. We were successful with our application to receive a collection of small trees before we had even asked the Council for permission - oops! In the blink of an eye we received 135 trees with varieties including rowan, dog rose, hawthorn, hazel and crab apples. We quickly advertised for volunteers to help plant the trees and were delighted to be joined by multiple families alongside our regular Rangers.
Worcester Cathedral has a beautiful bug hotel, which inspired us to have one of our own. After a quick brainstorm with Julie we decided on a Fort Design. We reached out to the local Men’s Shed group who shared our vision and Mark Powell took it on as a personal project. We spent months collecting pinecones, bricks and sticks to go inside. We had an enjoyable Monday Rangers layering the hotel ready for its new guests. One exciting feature that Mark included was an integral hedgehog shelter. We anticipate a 5* bed and breakfast rating from the hedgehogs…at the expense of reviews from the bugs!
To further encourage diverse and healthy bug populations, with help of the lovely people at Worcester Bosch we created a stumpery with logs, ferns and native bulbs.
It might appear that we have lots of planned projects but some of our best projects are spontaneous! I’d spotted a tripod type bug hotel on Facebook and in no time, using hazel branches, left over pinecones and cardoon heads Karen and other Rangers had soon created a bug teepee for the wildlife area.
Photo by Julie Grainger
We love our projects that have involved working with different groups of volunteers and we’re helping to inspire other groups to explore ideas to involve the community and create better habitats for local wildlife. We have already heard that other groups have commissioned their own bug hotels with the Men’s Shed group! Who knows how many other groups may be inspired to build their own dead hedge?!
