Woodland Trust saplings

The Wildflower Meadow starts to take shape and Forest School plant saplings.

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Many thanks to all the Friends of Montefiore Woodland for their help on Sunday 14th April be it: dead-hedging, litter picking, seed sowing, protective meadow fencing, sapling planting to name a few…..

The first spring migrant was heard in the woodland for this year, a Chiffchaff and despite the wind, even the first butterfly, a Comma, was spotted! Hopefully, this will be just the start of many visiting insects and birds! Watch the website for more sightings! http://montefiorewoodland.org.uk/surveys.php

At last the younger members were able to enjoy planting several saplings (following the postponement of this activity as a result of the very cold March we have recently experienced.) Hopefully these will flourish and be a memory for them in the years to come when they visit the Woodland possibly as adults with their own families…..

The Wildflower Meadow is really taking shape. It was just such a pity more of us couldn’t be involved sowing the seed with the strong wind! However, as soon as the wind dropped the remaining seed was broadcast. Hopefully, we will now have sufficient rain and warm sunshine to aid germination! I look forward to seeing the result of all our efforts later in the year! I’m sure it will bring pleasure to many in the community! Not to mention bees, butterflies, moths and other insects!

We hope to hold several activities and events throughout the summer and details of these will be advertised on our website: http://montefiorewoodland.org.uk/activities.php

Rotovator to the Rescue

March Work Parties – Rotovator to the rescue!

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The challenging March weather affected our Work Parties, particularly the intended sapling planting. The hardy members that helped to remove the bramble crowns, runners and roots on Wednesday 13th March quickly warmed up despite the chilly conditions! However, this task again proved to be too labour-intensive to do by hand and one of our members (following Jewson’s recent generosity) went and spoke to the manager at Travis and Perkins in Margate to see if they would possibly loan us the use of a rotovator for a day? To our delight they agreed and on Wednesday 27th March, they delivered and collected not only a Rotovator but to our surprise another mini digger as well! We are very grateful to Travis and Perkins for their support for making this possible.

As we have learned from this project having the right tools makes all the difference!

The preparation of the meadow is now complete and we hope to sow the wildflower seed very soon! All we need now is some warm sunshine and April showers!

In these times of cut-backs and recession we are so grateful to the support of these two local companies and I know from the comments given to us as we work, the local community are very pleased with the difference we are making to this area!

NB Next Work Party – Sunday 14th April 10am –1pm.

If you can spare an hour or two, do come along and join us.