Thursday marked the first session of Quarry Club. An ex-quarry now turned nature reserve thanks to the help of Trees for Burnley who, in the early 90’s, planted the site with trees. I had scheduled work for a month at this site including cutting back weeds either side of the path, removing dead wood, and removing low hanging branches. Five residents of the area came to volunteer and as a result we managed much of the scheduled work for the month in a single session! Between us all we managed to clear the paths of overgrown weeds, cut back the roots, cut the low hanging branches down. We also managed to cut back some of the piles of dead wood that had been left, and work on some of the windfallen trees that have come down in recent storms.  

Each year children from across Lancashire are invited to the SPAR School Games. The School Games is a unique opportunity to motivate and inspire millions of young people across the country to take part in more fun activity that helps young people be active and move more.
This year the offer was a fabulous Party in the Park event, which combined the traditional sport activities and opportunities, with an array of different opportunities for the children to move more outdoors. The event finished with a colour run for all participants.

With the promotion of all things outdoors. This year marked the first year it was held in Burnley, across Thompsons park and Queens Park. Each school had individual scheduled sports sessions that their students were competing in and between these sessions were opportunities for the schools to enrol and try out activities like paddle boarding, yoga, meditation, and park and play.
I ran the park and play sessions where classes would enrol with us to undertake some horticultural activities.

The activities I offered were tree planting, flower arranging, and wildflower ID’ing. Three separate schools enrolled in the activities across the day. I showed them how to safely plant trees. How to identify wildflowers, and how to arrange flowers in pots. All the kids greatly enjoyed the sessions, and I feel they got a lot from it, with one child having enjoyed the session so much she ran back to hug both me and Alexis to say thank you.  

I was joined by Claire and Jason who assisted me with weeding a rose bed. This rose bed was overrun with weeds, trees, and dandelions. It took the three of us two hours to weed most of the bed. Leaving a small section for the following week. 

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.