This Year's News
2024
Scarecrow Trail
Once again we entered a scarecrow for the Gresford and Marford Scarecrow trail - this year was its 8th year. The theme was ‘Characters from Disney’ so as we have a ‘hundred acre wood’ we thought something from Winnie the Pooh would be appropriate. (Just to be clear, it’s not all ours - the third of it that’s the old Marford Quarry belongs to the North Wales Wildlife Trust, but the whole site really is 100 acres). Wol the owl was an obvious choice, and we went one step further - the house that was part of the display was carefully measured so that it can remain in the woodland after the end of the trail, and is the right dimensions to be a real owl box. We know that we have owls in the woods, so...
New Banner
July has been a busy month! We have a new banner for the gate! This formalises the support that Treehogs Tree and Vegetation Management have given to the site and the trustees over the past few years, and we are delighted to be able to display this confirmation of our on-going partnership. We are very grateful to Shaun and the team. We are actively looking for other partners who would be prepared to support us in a similar way.
Craft Festival Donation
We were very grateful to be chosen as one of the nominated charities to receive money from this year’s Gresford Craft and Quilting Festival. Their generous donation of £300 bought us a new wheelbarrow and other equipment, which will be well used by the volunteers.
Another Green Flag!
We are delighted to be awarded a ‘Green Flag’ again - our ninth year running - and now we have a flagpole, we can fly the flag for events like volunteers mornings.
Butterfly Conservation
We had an important visitor to the volunteers group this month! Alan Sumnall is Head of Conservation Wales and Northern Ireland for Butterfly Conservation. He had a walk round the site a few months ago, and was excited to find lots of wild strawberries, an important forage for species like Grizzled Skipper, Dingy Skipper and White Letter Hairstreak. Sadly, not many butterflies - rare or otherwise - were in evidence when he took some of the volunteers for a guided walk, but he pointed out that this in itself is useful information. One of BC’s aims is to try to link sites together and we are within the landscape boundaries for species that exist on the Industrial Estate, so it would be great if we can manage the landscape so that we can encourage some new species to venture this far. He also had some useful information sheets to hand out
Storm Isha
Somehow wind and rain seems to be more damaging now they’ve started naming storms, and Storm Isha caused us to lose some mature trees. Making the most of the opportunity, we asked Treehogs to chop one of the larger trunks into short lengths for us, and hey presto! with some input from the volunteers a new seating area came into being. We hope it will be useful for some of the schools and community groups who use the woodland on a regular basis.
Notice Board Rebuilt
The volunteers replaced the posts from the noticeboard by the entrance at the last session, after it had been felled by Storm Debi last December. Now the postcrete has set, it was time for the board to be re-erected. We will replace it at some point - but for the moment it’s doing just as good a job as ever.
