The CAF funded Green Activity Coordinator is working in collaboration with Joel from East Lancashire Wildlife Trust. The aim is to deliver sessions that provide a range of work within the green spaces sector. This includes work such as park maintenance, arborist based activities, ecology, tree planting and many more.
Today we embarked upon a task to complete a little fence painting on behalf of the Burnley Borough Council. Within five hours, Joel and I, and two volunteers manage to wire brush a section of fence and paint it green.

The friends of Ightenhill were undertaking some memorial tree maintenance today.
I assisted by removing a 2×2 foot square of grass top from around the tree, Then dug down a few inches to remove a small amount of the top soil. Whilst removing some of the top soil I levelled off the areas, removed the stakes that had held the tree in place for many years, and also edged off the area with a half moon. I did this for four of their memorial trees. They returned quite happy with the work I had completed for them. I then met with playground team and parks officer to discuss possibilities for play equipment repair. The volunteers continued work on the Memorial trees, they laid mesh netting over the exposed soil area to prevent weeds from growing through. They then laid woodchip above the netting within the square boundaries which hid the netting whilst adding a lovely contrast to the grass.

Friends of Ightenhill Park. 

I joined Kath and Irelene in the vegatable garden for the first time. We prepared soil for vegetables, pruning dead leaves, and rotating vegetables around the polytunnel. I then went to help Ian and David move soil that was left over from filling the planters. We moved soil from the ton bags to a designated soil bay within the compound. We also helped Kath and Irelene by taking soil to the potato plot to help mound up the potato’s around the stems.  As potato’s grow, they need soil to be mound up around the plant, to encourage more spud growth!

Val, Pete and I decided to continue barking out paths within Scott Park. I showed Val where and how I would like the bark to be placed whilst Pete and I regularly collected bark via the wheelbarrow and ferried it up to her. We had the path complete by roughly 11:15. The friend’s group had put on a fun day in the park the previous day. The volunteers were quite tired as this was an all-day affair. After barking the path in the park the following day, I let the volunteers go as I was quite sure that they were still very tired from the previous day.  

Today marked the day of working on the circular bed outside the front of Towneley Hall by the pond and Cafe. It was overrun with self-seeded trees, brambles, and undesirable plants. They had to go. Working on the bed was Helen, Hazel, Karen, David, Jason, Mirabela, and myself. You often find when working on a circular bed that one completes work in segments, and that you end where you started.