Weekly Six 25th June - 1st July 2007

This weeks 'weekly six' is dedicated to 'public open spaces'! Yesterday I went out with my camera to one of my favourite local parks. I used to work in local government as the tree officer and this was one of the parks that I looked after, my parade square if you like! Its been raining in England (really throughout all of it!) 'a hard cold rain. A kind of rain that washes away the grimy cover of would be villains and out into the darkness' .... sorry about that deviation anyway it has been raining for weeks now which has great effect on vegetation so everything looked verdant, albeit all to a grey backdrop!

I wish to pay tribute to parks and open spaces for the benefit they provide for all. This particular park is situated in the centre of a large, busy town however once inside the avenue of trees situated around the entire park boundary, the traffic sounds are replaced with bird song and you could be anywhere, for an hour or two.

This avenue leads into the western edge of the park and goes down to the largest lake. The avenue is a mixture of oak, beech, chestnut and sycamore.

This is the boating lake. I used to bring our dogs here a lot. It's a very dog friendly park and a good spot for a canine social! This is not my dog however when I heard the splash and turned I couldn't resist a picture.

The boating lake has an overflow down a stone stepped channel into the first of two lakes. The lakes have tree planted islands throughout them and are therefore densely populated at present by nesting birds and fledgelings of all variety.

There used to be a stand of white willow trees planted here next to the edge of the lake, seen here bottom left. They had to be removed for safety reasons and I decided to extend the planting area and put a good mix in. I was delighted to see that almost all of the plants have survived and are doing really well, as are most of the newly planted trees within the park. The tree guards were an experiment to prevent vandalism and are working well. It is really hard to get young trees established either due to vandalism or drought stress.

This is a view of the largest lake looking back up the park, the newly planed trees can just be seen bottom right. Where ever you are in the park the views are all of rolling grassland and beautiful mature trees. It is vital that tree planting is undertaken within these landscapes. Many of the park areas local government manage were formally Victorian estates, as this was, therefore 150 years ago they were maintained to the highest level with a staff extensive enough to attend to the lawns, the flower beds and rose garden, the lakes and avenues. However, due to dreadfully low resources in all aspects of local government such areas are often now maintained to a much lesser standard and tree planting particularly can become a low priority.

There are many features that make this park and no doubt anyone who goes in it will have a different favourite aspect or area however the mature tree cover is of a similar age and without it this would be a totally different environment. Establishing a mixture of species and age variety now provides that replacement landscape for when it's needed.

This is a mulberry, rumoured to originate from a cutting of Shakespeares' mulberry tree in Stratford. I cannot confirm this however a nice story I thought. It had been propped for years due to stem failure but looks beautiful every year and bares very tasty fruit.

This is the formal lawn in the upper park where the major's of the town have historically had a tree planted for them at the end of their term. The lawn is full now so the trees go elsewhere in the upper park.

This is one of my favourite inhabitants of the park. The grey squirrels here are very playful. There is actually another squirrel about 1m up looking down however he snuck behind a branch as I took this. Many people visit the park to feed the squirrels or birds. I have always enjoyed feeding birds myself. There is a lake near me where you can stand and feed the birds and you are completely surrounded by a congregation of all sorts with swans at the front taking food from your hands and if you sit down and let them smaller birds on your knee. It is an awesome experience to be that close and involved with another creature, especially a wild creature. Ok so we are not talking really wild but I think you can get the same pleasure from interacting with any living creature. Animals have always been a big part of my life and whether it's sheep in a field next door or eagles halfway up a mountain I treasure every minute that I get to witness them in their environment.

Anyway, that was my park visit, obviously there were lots more photos but it is the weekly six and I think I picked the best of the day.