Hello once again to our regular monthly up date from the gang here at the Tree Life Centre and what we have been getting up to! As it the final one of 2015 we hope you all had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all. Whilst we were, as usual, extremely busy over the course of the month, we closed the Centre for two weeks over the holiday period, so there is a little bit less to report, hence the blog may be a little bit shorter than usual. Anyway, lets get on with it…
As mentioned in previous posts we are helping Bristol City Council fulfil their One Tree Per Child project across the city, and with a little help from OVO Energy who supplied some of the trees as part of their national tree planting project, we visited two sits to help turn greens paces back to woodland. The first site we visited was Meadowsweet Open Space in Fishponds where the volunteers marked out the tree planting areas and started planting to be followed up a few days later by a group from Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association Wales and South West. The group, who joined us previously at a tree planting site in Kingswood earlier in the year, braved the elements and spent the day planting a large area of native trees. We hope you all enjoyed the day and we look forward to you joining us again for another event!
The second site we visited was Stockwood Open Space where the plan is to help turn parts of the space back into woodlands. The group only managed to plant around 150 trees due to the weather but they managed to mark out the areas ready for a return in the New Year where the plan is to plant a couple of thousand trees with a variety of groups over a number of weeks. If you are interested in joining in this massive planting project then please do get in touch!
Another off-site work day we fulfilled was the continued grassland management at Golden Valley Nature Reserve at Wick. Over the last few years a variety of local TCV groups have been helping to restore parts of the nature reserve to grassland by managing encroaching growth of hedgerows and removing any unwanted self seeded tree saplings. We were also joined by a few people from CEMEX, who currently quarry and own the site, to help with the work, who in partnership with South Gloucestershire Council and Friends of group are managing and maintaining the conservation of the nature reserve so when the quarrying stops the area will be a local haven for wildlife.
In 2016, after a successful pilot launch Little Acorns will be returning on a Wednesday for 2-4 year olds and their carers for exciting outdoor education sessions. In addition to this we will be launching a family activity day on Saturdays called Family Nature Warriors where everyone can get involved in a variety of activities across the site, and what’s more, its free! For more information on both these groups then see our Facebook page or contact our Project Officer Jason.
Finally, we will be looking at different ways we communicate with you in 2016. We will still be using Facebook and Twitter so you can still Like and Follow us for up to date news as always but we are looking at potential other ways of sharing our news and events so keep a look out for announcements on our various social media platforms.