The Results of the Facebook Survey are in …

Thanks very much to all of you who took part in our survey. Your answers will help us make plans for the future of the nature reserve and let us know what you think of the work carried out so far. Here are a few points that might be of interest:

Over 75% of those who replied were from Headley Down, and 40% are regular visitors, some even visiting more than once a day. We hope that will increase as things improve. We had plenty of positive feedback about the benefits the nature reserve is bringing, the two most popular being ‘improving the image of the estate’ and ‘increasing the local wildlife’.

The idea of looped pathways was welcomed, and the inclusion of more child focussed features and wildlife information. You’ll be pleased to know that plans for all of these are already underway. Work on a special clearing for children’s activities, with access along a hard-surfaced path from Alder Road, will begin very soon.

Illustrated information boards about the different species on site are in production, and fundraising has begun for a new informal path through the trees that will join the main path at each end.

Various questions were asked, the most frequent being ‘Where is the nature reserve?’ so we must try to make this information more easily available. There is a map on our website on the contacts page, but we will put one on our facebook page too.

There was a request for a wildlife pond but, sadly, we can’t do this because we are not allowed to excavate on this old landfill site as nobody really knows what was buried in there up until the seventies!

Another comment was made about the main hard-surface path not actually going anywhere. The intention is to have a path going all the way from Alder Road to Maple Way but our plans have been delayed because there is an area of Japanese Knotweed to be dealt with first. East Hants District Council have employed professional contractors to carry out a programme of treatment and this is the fourth year. We’re hoping that next year might be the last and we’re already raising funds to complete the path as soon as possible.

One person referred to our use of weedkiller and asked us not to use it on the poppies. The type of herbicide we use is safe for animals as soon as it’s dry and we stay on site and put out warning signs when any spraying is underway. Spot treatment was used once in the spring next to the new hedge, but only on vigorous growth that would have choked the young saplings. Wildflowers, were left unsprayed, but the poppies especially succumbed quickly to the heat and dry weather that followed – thank goodness the hedge survived! Since then, weeding of the hedge has been carried out by hand, and only plants that might overcome the young saplings have been removed. Any use of herbicide will be kept to a minimum and we’ll put out warning signs the day before and during the spraying. We’ll also post information on facebook and our website.

For those of you who would like to volunteer, we’ll be calling for help to sow the wildflower seeds in early autumn so we look forward to seeing you then.

Lastly, there were suggestions for more publicity. We have put brief signs on site listing some of our plans. Our website is now accessible, though still under construction. The Messenger will carry more short articles about our progress. Unfortunately, leafleting each house is costly and time consuming but we have written items for the Parish Magazine which has a wide local distribution and we hope to feature in any community publicity carried out by Woodlands Hall and Radian. We’ll do our best to keep you all in the picture in as many ways as we can, and would be really grateful for anything you can do to spread the word for us by talking to friends or sharing our facebook posts.

Thanks again for your support and for helping to make Headley Down a better place to live, for people and for wildlife.