CRG & St Mellons Clean Up combined forces to do a “deep clean” of Hendre Lake Park. Overall, they mustered around 33 volunteers, including some welcome new faces.

The vegetation along the paths and around the fishing pegs had been cut back recently, to reveal a lot of “embedded” rubbish — some of it had obviously been there a very long time. There was also quite a lot of fly-tipped waste, including used nappies.

The final haul was almost 90 big bags of rubbish, plus a large amount of miscellaneous items, including an upholstered foot stool (retrieved from the lake), a car wheel and a large gas cylinder.

A lot of the rubbish — especially things like broken camping chairs, plus drinks cans and food packaging in the reeds & brambles next to fishing pegs — had clearly been dumped by an irresponsible minority of anglers. It’s so sad that the actions of a thoughtless few can spoil things for everyone else, not to mention the hazards posed to wildlife.

Still, Hendre Lake Park now looks much cleaner than it did — let’s hope it stays that way for a while.

And our thanks to the Community Park Rangers for being there to supervise & support us.

Around 20 volunteers spent the morning in Roath Park Wild Gardens. Most of them occupied their time by building ever-larger habitat piles from lots (and lots!) of laurel, at the request of Gareth, from the Community Park Rangers.

The laurel had been cut down because it had spread far too much and was completely shading out the understorey, excluding any native species. Cherry laurel is notoriously invasive in this way, because it’s shade-tolerant (and so grows well in existing woodland), is evergreen and densely leaved (and so shades out anything below it), and is spread quickly by birds that eat its attractive red berries.

Others did a litter-pick, which always seems to necessary, wherever we are, sad to say.

Around 25 volunteers spent the morning planting trees and litter-picking in Parc Tredelerch.  Over 500 trees were planted, under the expert direction of Alec from the Community Park Rangers.

The trees will eventually form hedge around an area of marshy meadow that’s historically been excellent for wildflowers, especially orchids, but which has been suffering from too much ‘footfall’ in recent years.

A variety of different species were planted — hawthorn, which will form the main ‘structure’ of the hedge, together with rowan, spindle, hazel and hornbeam.

The litter-pick produced quite a heavy crop of bags, although most of the rubbish came from the road verges outside the park. And there were also several of the now-inevitable nitrous oxide canisters.

In a welcome contrast to all the recent rain, the 22 volunteers who came along to Grangemoor Park were treated to a gloriously sunny winter’s morning.

One group carried on with the habitat management that we started before Xmas — cutting down self-seeded willow, dogwood, bramble, etc, to help restore an area of grassy meadow and clear a watercourse, and building a dead hedge with all the brash.

Another group litter picked the park, a task that is, sadly, always necessary.

24 volunteers spent the morning litter-picking the Taff Trail, upstream and downstream of Radyr Weir, plus tackling the grass verge along Longwood Drive.

A wader-wearing trio spent the whole two hours in the Melingriffith feeder, walking slowly up from the stone bridge towards the weir, removing drinks cans from the stream bed. Despite CRG having taken an estimated 10,000+ cans out of the feeder over the past few years, they still managed to fill 6 bags, and there are plenty more still in there, sadly.

Overall, 45 bags of rubbish were collected, plus a car tyre. And 200 more NOx canisters were dropped off for ‘making safe’ and recycling as scrap.

Nine volunteers spent a very pleasant morning in Grangemoor Park.
Some of them did a litter-pick — something’s that’s sadly always needed, given the proximity of shops & fast food outlets.

Others continued with the task of ‘reclaiming’ an area of what’s supposed to be grassy meadow by cutting down bramble, dogwood & willow. This was our fourth session there this year and we’re definitely making good progress!

The brash (the cut-down material) was added to the dead-hedge we started on our first session here, back in March. Whilst it’s got no practical purpose — it’s not keeping anything in or out — it will provide terrific habitat for all manner of insects and fungi as it all decays.

The awful weather didn’t deter the stalwart CRG volunteers this morning. They braved heavy rain to carry on with the habitat management work on Hendre Lake island that we started last Saturday.

A large area has now been cleared of bramble, with the aim of maintaining it as muddy scrape, which will really suit some of the birds at Hendre, like snipe and moorhen.

Indeed, even before we’d left the island, a moorhen was looking for food in what had been 2m high bramble this time last week. (There’s a photo attached — the moorhen was quite far away, so is a bit blurry!)

The CRG ferry was in operation this morning, taking people over to the island in Hendre Lake for a couple of hours of heavy-duty habitat management — reclaiming the interior of the island from the vegetation that’s taken it over in recent years; mostly bramble, but also a lot of self-seeded willow.

One thing we haven’t contended with before when using the boat is ice. The lake was completely frozen over, and it was a thicker layer than you might think. We’re very grateful to the Rangers for going across in their boat first, and fulfilling the role of an ice-breaker.

Once across, a line was rigged up across the water, so people could pull themselves across in the boat, without having to mess around with oars.

And whilst one group of volunteers undertook the habitat management, another group litter-picked the park, which is, sadly, always a much-needed activity.

Many thanks to everyone who braved the freezing conditions!