Bringing people and wildlife together
As trustees of our charity, we feel very lucky when we’re working on the nature reserve. It’s a joy to be out now that the weather is warmer, surrounded by greenery and seeing how well things are growing after all the rain we had earlier in the year. We can take a break to welcome new visitors and chat with the regular locals, including some of the young people of different ages from Heatherlands and nearby who have been playing and meeting up on the reserve over the recent holiday. They’re great kids – friendly and helpful. Two Duke of Edinburgh Award volunteers are working towards their Bronze Medals and will be carrying out various tasks on the reserve over the next few weeks.
Our recent projects have been hard work but rewarding. After clearing more bracken, we now have an orchard area of around twenty trees, with spring bulbs alongside a new path. Our thanks to the volunteers of Green Up Britain in Farnham for help with the tree and spring bulb planting. Their charity also helped to fund the purchase of the trees, and our District Councillors, Richard Millard and Anthony Williams, gave money for the bulbs. We’ve now started planting a Nuttery with Hazel, Almond and Walnut trees. As we’ve had more requests from people wishing to ‘adopt’ a tree, when the planting is complete we’ll be giving each one a number so that families can have their own tree to watch over throughout the coming years. This will be part of a National Lottery funded project entitled ‘Community Woodland Revival’ which will allow us to carry out remedial tree work and path improvements.
‘Bringing people and wildlife together’ is the aim of our charity, and the project for a series of chainsaw carvings seems to be achieving this. Thanks to the One Stop, we were able to commission and install eight ‘Wildlife Friends’. These realistic representations of birds and animals ensure that even the youngest children enjoy a walk on the nature reserve and start to learn about British fauna. There are plenty of places for everyone to relax, including our Betty the Badger and Freddy the Fox benches for bird watching near the feeding stations. And of course, thanks to local fundraising following the theft of Montgomery, the Erie Wood Bear, his identical replacement, Monty II, is now firmly fixed in place waiting to greet all our visitors.
