Today, I took a day of work to help TCBC Ranger, Jon Howells with volunteer John adkins to prepare a site for oak respacing on Henllys LNR.

Tomorrow, children from Henllys Church in Wales Primary School will be coming down with Jon to  respace some closely packed oak saplings.

There is a wonderful oak tree which has been subjected to terrible arson from vandals on the LNR. Fortunately, some of the tree is still alive and it has been producing great saplings over the last 3 years. Most of these, however, are tightly packed and have been subjected to the  terrors of being pulled all over the place by brambles so lack great shape.

The idea is to dig up and respace some of these saplings to increase the effectiveness of this crop. The job for today was to cut out the brambles from around these saplings. Jon was using a brushcutter, while John and I used long-handled hooks.

While performing this, as per usual, we uncovered a large amount of historic and fresh litter which filled one large bag. I also found a perfectly functional garden fork which will be donated to a local school group.

All in all, a great morning and best of luck for tomorrow. This is the first chance to bring a school group on the LNR, so thanks to Jon for organising it. Hopefully it will be able to help friends of Henllys LNR no end of good.

New information, new board, a school's visit and networking for positivity

Not a bad couple of weeks for us here on the LNR. Following on the tails of our last great event, bolstered timely by volunteers from Cardiff's Trail Scrubs group, we hear our first grant has been successful and soon we will be gaining a new notice board on the LNR. This was a Keep Wales Tidy Grant, which was match funded from CCW. The noticeboard will allow us to communicate events and relay information on the LNR to users to gain more support, understanding and maybe even help for this much used and loved community green space.

In a great move for the LNR, we found out that the Ranger, Jon, will be bringing a class of pupils over to the LNR from Henllys Church in Wales School in the next couple of weeks. The event we planned together will involve digging up some of the oak saplings which have grown up in one part of the LNR and replant them in some other sections. The parent tree has fantastic form and will hopefully help to improve the biodiversity of LNR. I've taken time off from work to lend a hand on this as it is during the school week and we're not normally able to do this crucial kind of activity to help improve the LNR while increasing awareness of what we do and try to achieve. So a big thanks to TCBC's Countryside Section for helping our group here.

 A wise man once said "it is into the sea the river flows". Well, another not so wise philosopher said just now "from a cluster of small tightly packed saplings which will probably die, we will make mighty oaks grow". The children coming down to help our small group will invigorate us, educate and enthuse them and you never know, these trees may even stem the floods that are flowing along the river down to the sea. Live in hope that you can but try.

11.03.12 Five events in one, great morning

Friends of Hennlys LNR were bolstered today by several new faces. Amy, Nikki and four from the newly formed Cardiff volunteer group Cardiff Trails Scrubs. It was the single biggest event we have hosted in one session so great news for us.

We started off from previous events on the reserve by performing a litterpick and the 11 volunteers quickly collected 10 bags of litter (event 1).

Rhett and Ollie from Cardiff Trail Scrubs picked up the large rakes and cleared out the drain which appears to be a major cause of localised LNR flooding and erosion.

The water was flowing beautifully afterwards (event 2).

The reserve is crossed by power lines and under these lines, trees will never reach maturity. Also, some of the trees were far too close together and were earmarked for thinning by Jon, the countryside ranger. Many of us were familiar with coppicing, but this time, it was tree felling and we went through safe tree felling and tool use. We split into two groups and felled a few trees (event 3).

Following on from this, we cut the trees into lengths to make the external and internal walls for the otter holt (event 4).

The final part of the day was to install some of the willow fascines which I made when performing some work at Cathays Community Centre. I donned the waders and slopped through smelly, bubbling sedimented mud and added the 3-bundles to the wall of willow. I added some new living stakes to stabilise these in place (event 5).

Slideshow of all the photos.

There are plans to finish off the holt, and details will follow.

On another note, some laminated sheets concerning a consulation for dogs on green spaces have been placed around entrances to the LNR. The consulation isn't proposing a ban for dogs on the LNR, but on playing fields and school grounds. However, it does mention enforcement of dog fouling on the LNR and other public access areas. There are many dog walkers who use the LNR and we plea that dog owners do clear up after their dogs. Dog poo bags can be taken home or placed in local authority bins.

Next Event Sun 11th March at 10am

See the Next Event section, but we'll be coppicing some trees, making an otter holt (house for otters) from the wood, instaling 3 more willow bundles into the stream and a litterpick near the drain.

Marking up trees with the woodland ranger

There's still some time to do a little habitat work before spring comes along and several trees were marked up today with TCBC's woodland ranger. Most of these were under the pylons so would never be allowed to mature to their full height anyway. Most of the trees are goat willow which we have been using this winter to make willow bundles to try and stabilise the eroding stream banks. This one appears to be working well.

We'll doing this work in the next few weeks so if you are interested in joining in feel free to send an email to friendsofhenllyslnr.gmail.com