Slaying bank bramble
Back to the Windrush valley today with Glorious Grasslands to continue the restoration of a new site we started last week. The target today was the bank further along the valley, where glades would be created by the woodland edge and a huge bramble patch between both fields was to be removed.
There were two brushcutters, so I worked with Chris on tackling the deeply encroaching bramble.
We had ordered a mulch blade for this job, but it hadn’t arrived so we stuck with the regular tri blade, but using a mulch technique with the handlebars low and the blade above head height to slice into it.
We started on opposite sides, and within half and hour we had pretty much met in the middle. I left Chris to finish off because he had the meatier petrol machine. I went into the field we did last week to cut down the remaining patches there and rake off the material into the habitat piles. That pretty much took until midday.
I then moved over to help the glade team stack the arisings into a habitat pile. It turned out there was absolutely loads of branches so I stayed inside the lair and took the endless branches dragged over and stacked them inside.
It’s pretty tiring work after a while. The more you put in, the harder it is to manoeuvre new pieces into the stack. And they kept getting tangled on overhead vegetation. But somehow we got close to 3pm and all the pieces were in.
The last quarter of an hour was all hands on deck to clear the remaining vegetation from the bramble patch I cut earlier. The end result, across both fields looked great and a hugely improved area for grassland to thrive next season. We’ll be returning to this site in future years, so will be good to track progress.
In the evening we held the final Dursley Green Drinks of the year at Kingshill house. This has been going 18 months and new people are still discovering and attending every session. We had around 20 people and there was plenty of lively discussion and contacts made between everyone.
