What's New

Notice Boards

Regular visitors will have noticed the erection of two notice boards, one at each end of the Green. The aim is to display notices about what is happening on the Green including what has been spotted over the last few months.

This later aspect may take a little time to get organised but if you can help in species surveys please do contact us via e-mail at info@uckfieldmillenniumgreen.co.uk

 

Working Parties

Regular work parties are held for anybody who is interested in helping to preserve and enhance the Green. They are generally held on the second Sunday of each month. We start at 9.30am and finish at 1.00pm.

Although we would love to see you for all of this period, we would appreciate your help for even part of the morning. We initially meet in the car park of the Ridgewood Village Hall and then move down into the site. If you are coming later please give Jo Conway a ring else you may have to search to find him and the work teams.

Please bring along gardening gloves (and a pair of clippers can be very useful!), we will supply any specialist tools that we need to use and give instructions, where needed on their use.

No matter who you are or what age you are, we can find a job for you. We do ask that children are accompanied by an adult.

Special Projects

Over the next three years (funds permitting!) we are planning to enhance the Green by undertaking a number of Special Projects. These are tasks that are too much for the Sunday morning work parties to undertake although inevitably, they will generate maintenance work as time goes by. This section will explain what is happening to projects that we have started.

SOUTHERN BOUNDARY REGENERATION PROJECT

Over the project period, regeneration work will be undertaken on the southern boundary of the Millennium Green. This work is being carried out as part of a regeneration project to re-establish a coherent hedge line using a mixture of native plant species. Because the adjacent land is used for stock grazing it is important that we maintain a stock-proof boundary.

Part of the work will entail clearance of the area to allow openings for the new saplings to develop. In some cases we will be pollarding trees in rotation to ensurethe new hedge blends into the existing environment

The work is being undertaken by supervised teams of students from BTCV Enterprises based at Plashetts Wood. In phase One work started at the western end of the boundary. Undergrowth was cleared and any remaining trees and shrub cut back in the last months of 2002 and, at this time a strained wire fence was erected. Planting of the hedge for this phase was completed in February 2003.

Phase two will start in the same months in 2004 (funds permitting) and will (hopefully) complete the hedge line.

There will be an ongoing task of ensuring that the new saplings are kept free of weeds and brambles and it is intended that this will form one of the tasks that the monthly work parties undertake.

POND REGENERATION PROJECT

This project was formed to regenerate the pond that was established under the initial funding. Unfortunately the pond had failed to establish any coherent aquatic environment due mainly to being unprotected against random dog or human intrusion. This constant intrusion had both silted up the pond and inhibited any fringe habitats developing.

Over the the summer months of 2003 a lot of work has been carried out to achieve the project objectives. So far we have cleared the area of the scrub vegetation, dug out the silt to re-create a deep water section and erected a post and rail fence, complete with stock netting and an access gate, around the whole area.

We still intend to install some board edging to allow the banks to stabilise and perhaps create a pond-dipping platform and a small, simple plank seat but this will need to await further funding. Our intention is to plant some suitable, native fringe and aquatic plants to encourage diversity but this obviously depends upon it raining!

Obviously in the short term the pond will look "a muddy mess" but our aim is to create an environment that pond and Green users will enjoy.

SMALL BRIDGES

The various users of the Green have established a number of "unofficial" crossings of the ditches and stream. In some areas this had caused severe erosion of the ditch banks and made the areas hazardous for the unwary.

During 2004 BTCV erected four bridges constructed from ex-railway sleepers resting on a half-sleeper on a rubble base. Each bridge has been fitted with anti-slip netting.

 

FENCE IN SHIPREED LANE

In order to meet our Health and Safety obligations, the BTCV team on our behalf, have erected a post and rail fence along the Shipreed Lane edge of Pit Two. This will be fitted with stock proof netting over the lower portion. The trees behind this fence will, in due course be pollarded and the spaces inbetween infilled so that in time, a new, thicker hedge will form.

FUTURE PROJECTS

These include the following:-

1. At one of the crossing points of the stream, watercress has become established. In order to encourage growth and to protect this bed, this project aims to both clear some of the accumulated rubbish upstream of the bed and to erect a proper bridge crossing..

2. Open up access to the delicate ecosystem of Pit 1.

3. As part of the educational programme for the site, numbers of bird and bat boxes would be erected and their occupancy recorded through a joint project with others.