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 – and I fear that most of his beds look like this at the moment. But of course they were designed in the days when gardeners came at two a penny and expected to spend most of their waking hours keeping the weeds under control. These days it is down to us volunteers – hard at work on that very bed ten days ago…

And then again this morning when three of us were doing battle with the ground elder while the other four were scraping all those mini weeds out from between the bricks.

And don’t think that Golders Hill is the only place with paths to be weeded. Here we are in the pergola in the Hill Garden. Same issue – those wretched little weeds that cannot be allowed to sully the paving stones of his lordship’s garden!

Not that it is all micro weeds in pathways. Because so little was able to be done during the two years of COVID, some of the more rampant weeds, such as green alkanet, have had a field day and have thoroughly dug themselves in – which means that their long tap roots could have burrowed a foot down into the ground. This is fork digging work – none of the hands and knees micro stuff.

And when I say they have serious roots, I mean serious roots….

Not that it is all weeding – well, not quite all.

Here we are a few weeks ago in Highgate Woods where the rangers have created a wild flower meadow area. To give the flowers the best chance we are hand pulling out the dead grass from last year.

And later that week I was bramble bashing  in the Kenwood meadows – to clear the area for our sphagnum moss bog. Once again, the brambles had taken advantage of the lock down and were seriously encroaching on the bog – definitely not a great idea as it is our Site of Special Scientific Interest (our SSSI) about which the experts get very excited. Certainly our work over the last few months has paid off as the area of moss seems to have about trebled since I was there last. This is only a small patch out of the total.

And then finally,  for a total change of scene.

On Saturday I joined the Woodland management crew on the West Heath. Here the rangers want to re-open some of the glades that have been taken over by trees – to let the sun in and encourage both grass and wild flowers.  An old oak here had suffered badly in the latest storm so they wanted to maximise the opening that had given. We were therefore ‘processing’ the fallen branches so that we could use them to build dead hedges to keep walkers to their assigned paths. The increased footfall on the heath during the two years of lockdown means that many of the paths have doubled or trebled in width encroaching seriously into the wildlife habitat. So there is major reclamation work going on all over the heath and, obvioulsy, we Heath Hands volunteers are involved!

Tomorrow – back to the cemeteries….