23 February 2012 – Dingwall Green Gym
This morning we were out for the Dingwall Green Gym, helping Simon from Cromarty Fisheries with tree planting along the River Peffery. However, it turned out most of our regulars had other things on this morning, or were unfortunately ill, so we only had one volunteer out with us – Billy. Mind you, he probably didn’t mind having two female VO’s in charge of him!! Billy’s enthusiasm and knowledge of the local area is always a delight to hear.
We started in the Marie Curie Community garden, aiming to just collect some willow that we had cut last Saturday, but we also ended up salvaging some willow from trees that had been ripped out of the banks of the river due to the council doing some dredging sometime in the last few days. It’s sad to see such established willow trees just ripped out, but at least we could rescue some of it.
We then headed up to Castle Leod, parked near the sawmill and headed down this lovely path through woodland to the area we were working at on the Peffery. We were planting willow around the banks of a v-shaped log dam. The v points upstream, and it’s aim is to help create a build up of clean gravel on the upstream side and then deeper pools beside the logs on the downstream side. These dams can cause erosion on the banks where they are situated so we were planting the willow beside them as it will strengthen the banks when it takes root and stabilise them.
More pictures of all our activities can be found on our flickr page.