Can you spare one hour, without any commitment, on Saturday (1.6.24) meeting at 10.00 hours, in Rowlands Dell (adjacent to the Hare & Hounds Pub). This beautiful haven for wildlife has been treated as an open tip for decades, where every inch is revealing a variety of pollutants harmful to wildlife. We hope to remove all the debris this summer and commence a huge programme of planting and rewilding in Autumn, that will be healthy for wildlife and humans, whilst ultimately preventing building on yet another perceived neglected green space.

 Main Tasks.

• Focusing on raking out the huge amounts of harmful to wildlife debris that has accumulated from over 30 years of sad neglect (eg vegetation, rubble and litter), down the north slope.

Equipment. All you will need are:

Sturdy boots, garden gloves (essentials)

• Ground ivy and debris removal: please bring litter picker, garden fork, rigid rake (essential) not a lawn rake, to remove some of the embedded litter.
• If you are interested in helping to remove the ground Ivy to enable us to access the debris beneath, please bring a brush cutter/strimmer, protective glasses.

Weekly Achievements & Thanks (25.5.24).

North Slope: continued raking and removing debris from a few metres of the descending north slope, resulting in more bin bags of rubbish and a new mountain of rubble debris and vegetation, with several journeys to the recycling centre (25.5.24).

• Ivy hedge trimming: thank you to Joan and Ken for gently trimming the Ivy following a concern raised by Colin a disabled mobility scooter user the previous week.
• New wildlife friendly hedge weeding: thank you to Christine for her brilliant weeding to enable the newly planted hedge to grow.

West section has the worst neglected area for close to the surface debris, collecting more binbags of litter. Unbelievably, every inch reveals even more historic litter/debris e.g. plastic, bottles, cans, mattresses, carpets, rubble, historic bin bags of rubbish etc.

• Topsoil and Rockery Donations: following the unexpected donations of rockery, topsoil and transportation last week, we configured the rocks into a small welcoming rockery area, which will be planted up with appropriate plants this week.

South Slope:

• continuing to spread donated woodchip on the debris cleared top south slope, to re-establish the tree hydrating humus layer, and temporarily suppress dominant weeds, prior to a large woodland planting programme at the end of the year.
• We are grateful once again to Paul Richards (Richards Tree Surgeons) for three consecutive lorry loads of woodchip, donated from their tree work (2 Willows and 1 Maple) at the MTC Glenn Park which we needed five hours to spread. With thanks for the five hours woodchip spreading to: Jill and Frank on the 20.5.24, Colin, Ros, Frank on the (21.5.24) and the rest of the team (Colin, Carl, Joanne, Diane Frank on the (25.5.24).
• Water Butt Donation. The newly donated and installed water butt has been invaluable to water some of the unexpected tree and shrub donations we have received and planted outside the dormant season.

Please check our website’s ‘event’ page at www.fomd.co.uk for more information and any last-minute changes. This is a one-hour event, without any commitment.

Overall, our one-hour sessions over the last 31 consecutive weeks have resulted in collecting 215 bin bags of litter, a huge and shameful array of polluting debris and tons of tree and wall damaging Ivy, with multiple trips to the recycling centre.

We have received some wonderful feedback and are clearly seeing the difference every time we are there.

This preparation is for Stage Two involving future green landscaping and a large planting programme which has been delayed from April to commence in August.

A huge thank you once again for your generous support of our group, you really are amazing and making such a massive difference to our community at so many levels.

Pictured: Joan, John, Carl, Ken, Diane, Joanne and not pictured Christine, Colin, and Frank.

Looking forward to seeing you.

Friends of Maghull & District (FOMD)

Together Making Maghull a better place to live.

More information about this and other projects at: www.fomd.co.uk

(website created by www.abbeytech.net/)

Contact: admin@fomd.co.uk

#fomdcic #Maghull #Environment

Richards Tree Services Contact.

07455115790

07846455697

https://richardstreeservicesnorthwest.co.uk

Joanne finds a ‘Dell’ mouse!!

Huge thanks to Harry and Paul Richards for their generous and essential woodchip.