A rather grey day last week saw the full complement of gardeners in thigh high waders gathered around the Hill Garden pond to attack the sedge and the water mint. As with so much else during the pandemic, both had taken advantage of the reduced gardening input to go forth and multiply – to the …
HeathHands
Woodland conservation on Sandy Heath
Wednesday morning saw a group of ten keen Heath Handers wielding scythes and mattocks alongside the ‘ride’ which runs across Sandy Heath from the Spaniards to North End. The ‘ride’ would have been much more open 50-100 years ago – much more ‘heath-y’ with bare ground, gorse and grassland. However, the wide scale sand digging …
Weeding the Heath
It is spring – and although there has been very little rain, that has not stopped the weeds galloping across the heath. Just flicking through my images from the last half dozen gardening sessions I realise that we have done very little apart from weed. Here is Keiran in the Golders Hill Park walled garden …
Searching for pollinators on the heath
At the very last minute this morning I joined Rory, Heath Hands’ expert on insects, pollinators and other invertebrates who was leading a group ferreting out early spring pollinators. And here we all are – photographing solitary miner bee nests – those little holes in the ground that we are all staring at! Female solitary …
Heath action
Those of you who follow us on Instagram will know that we Heath Hands-ers have been busy the last couple of weeks – but to bring everyone else up to date. Last week we were up in Highgate Woods waging war on the holly trees which had taken advantage of the restricted work that could …
Working with Heath Hands
I would hesitate to say that the steamingly hot mug of tea and handful of biscuits that you get half way through your gardening session (here being dispensed by the lovely Ash in the Hill Garden) is the main attraction of working with Heath Hands – but it certainly puts a kick in your spade! …