The park can be spectacular in autumn. Walking along the path next to Green Lane, the leaves are now thick underfoot and scrunch with each step. Near the centre of the park you might well come across a pair of young jays who seem to be nesting in Green Lane and are often in the park.

I thought that many of you would be interested to hear about a meeting in the Village Hall, for all those interested in the park on November 16th at 7pm.  It will be hosted by Jim Mathison, who is now the lead person from South Glos to do with our park. He has invited Hayley from Urban Buzz who will be telling us about a project to encourage pollinators across the Bristol area, which features our park as a key area of interest. Jim will also be reporting back on the consultation held over the summer about priorities for improvements in the park and introducing Glyn Everett from UWE, who is doing some research on green spaces and public behaviour.  I hope you can join us. I think it will be useful to get together.

Also to give notice that there will be various pieces of work done in the park over the next few weeks, on the theme of opening things up, some around the entrances to the park and some near the formal garden. There will also be some bulb planting. Let me know what you think about its impact.

Finally I thought you might like to see this pic of our local heron, sitting on a roof by our house and eyeing up my fish! Holly, our golden retriever, was growling in the background!

Best wishes

Chris

With autumn approaching, the council have set to clearing the young growth around the ponds. And they have a new machine! We are all beginning to hear about driverless technology, but our council seems to be setting the pace with this beastie, which is able to manage the very steep slopes around the watercourse.

I was also pleased to bump into Thorsten this week, who is behind the art installations in the formal area of the park. I think many people were impressed by this wooden sculpture of the life cycle of a butterfly. Thorsten tells me that there are plans for more work including a central feature with benches and quarried stones.

This Wednesday there was a gathering of Friends groups from across South Glos. The venue was the splendid and just-opened cafe in the middle of Page Park, pictured here.

I was pleased to meet with many others who are caring for their patch of land and plan to go and see some of these projects and swap notes. There is also news of an initiative about pollinators which our park could be involved in. More to follow on this.

The ugly prize went to this bat which was shown by the Avon Bat group, who care for orphaned and disabled bats. It is a Serotine bat one of our larger and less common species.

Finally, for those who would like to join us, our next orchard workday is on Saturday October 7th 10 – 12 as usual. I hope you can join us.

I have been cataloging the trees in the park. It is a long job! I thought you would be interested to hear that we have a surviving elm tree. The story across the UK is that we lost many of the old elms to Dutch Elm disease in the 70s, then some smaller ‘hedgerow’ elms emerged from saplings of that period, only to succumb to the disease in the 90s. It is surprising therefore to find an elm hidden away in this substantial oak tree (just after you have gone down the slope towards the Langley end).

Sadly it is showing signs of the disease in at least one limb, but at this point there is also much healthy foliage. Here is a picture of the characteristic fissured bark and leaf with its asymmetric base.

The park has been full of activity in the summer. Did you see the green woodpecker? There is also a very daring pigeon nesting in a crazy place – I wont tell you where, in case it gets disturbed, but here it is.

Birds of prey have been active too. I suspect this is the sign of a kill. If you are interested in hawks and the like you may enjoy ‘The Peregrine’ by JA Baker, a nature classic that is written with an extraordinarily rich literary style.

Finally, the sci-fi looking Cardoon in the orchard remind me to say that this Saturday 5th August is our next orchard work party. Please come if you can – we start at 10, finish at 12 and have jobs to suit all ages.

What a phenomenal summer we have been having,with temperatures in the 30s but enough rain that the plants are not in too serious a state. I recently had an interesting walk round the park with Jim Mathison of South Glos Council who is co-ordinating things from a council perspective. It was good to meet Jim and sense his knowledge and concern for plants and wildlife.

He pointed out these two dead elms which are near the gate by the houses at the Langley end. A sad legacy of Dutch Elm disease.

On a positive note you may have noticed that the hazel is now carrying its nuts and the blackberries are about to come ready. If you fancy picking some without prickles then try the orchard where there is now a good stand of thornless blackberries growing in amongst the autumn olive tree on the bend in the path.

It has been good to see the orchard come into its own this year with many local people sampling the fruit. That is what it is for, so help yourselves! If you would like a guide to how much to take, the normal gleaning rule is not to take more than a third of the ripe fruit from any bush.

Also news from Tony, he has been compiling a log of wild flowers in the park. I am hoping we can show you some of these shortly.

Finally I thought you would like to see these two grand birds, living close by. The heron is regularly at the park. There are at least four little egrets.

Have a good summer.

The ground was parched. The seeds were waiting. Cracks were appearing in the hard clay. I sense that the recent rain was a delight to nature, even if we humans tend to call it ‘bad’ weather.

Our park is looking its usual Spring splendid. Even common cow parsley and buttercups stand in great magnificence.

Down at the Langley pond, there were a few inhabitants who I am sure welcomed the refreshing of their water. The mallards are currently cavorting about as if at Versailles and the moorhens are already rearing their first chicks.

They say ‘nice weather for ducks’, but I am not sure that this young moorhen was appreciating the rain!

I gather that the late, hard frost was a problem for vine growers across the country and noticed that both the vines and the kiwi in our orchard have had their leaves burnt by the frost. We will see if they bear any fruit.

Otherwise the orchard seems to be doing well. The apple trees were beautiful as they flowered. The gooseberries will be ready soon. Jostaberries are full of vigour as usual. Why not take a walk through the orchard and see what you can identify?

We have our second orchard working party this Saturday May 20th 10 – 12 as usual. Please come and join us if you would like to. We will be planting herbs in our new herb bed, as well as some thimbleberry and chokeberry plants (heard of them before? I hadn’t!).

Lots of different jobs for all ages.

Have a good summer!

It has been disappointing to hear about anti-social behaviour in the park and elsewhere recently. For me the most devastating part of it all is the sense of helplessness. Gangs of young people are intimidating and if you intervene, even in the most respectful and gentle way,  you risk becoming part of their ‘game’. The mercy of it all is that they grow up and eventually they move onto other things.

The good news, of course, is that Spring is well and truly with us. Our trees are still in their winter coats, but new life is emerging everywhere and one of the most healing things to do is surely to pay attention to nature. As the trees reach out in the bright blue sky, so we can look up and enjoy the gifts around us.

That looks like a sizeable nest, (near Langley)  I wonder who is making it?

Have you noticed how the stream is naturally cutting out its path. On a different scale it could be a great gorge!

For those who would like to help with the orchard this year, I am now putting together some dates for the year. We try to do just two hours a month on a Saturday morning starting at 10am. The tasks this year are likely to include making a shallow wet area, a new herb garden and a special wildlife area. I hope that sounds interesting .All ages and levels of fitness very welcome. Provisional dates are

Apr 1, May 20, July 1, Aug 5, Sept 2, Oct 7

It would be very good if you could join us, even just for one or two sessions.

January can feel a bit muddy and dark at times, but there have been some beautiful moments in the park this winter. The dogwood, with its bright red wood by the Langley pond has been spectacular. The low winter sun can create some magnificent scenes.

Even the wet patch near the orchard has a certain rugged beauty.

I wonder if you share with me the sense that our park is a rather special place with its combination of play areas and wild spaces, its foxes, kingfishers and moorhens, dog walkers, shoppers and children, all mingling together and tolerating each other in the peace that only outdoors can bring.

You will have noticed that the hedging has been removed beside the formal garden near the nursery. For me,  it makes it all feel more open and friendly. What do you think? Any ideas about why this was done, who was consulted etc. It would be good to know.

Thanks also to the council for reinstating the borders to the paths, filling in with earth and reseeding, which happened over the autumn. It is a little sad to see this work so quickly undone by the council van failing to drive on the tarmac.

Soon we will see the snowdrops and daffs – but even now there are some lovely signs of new growth like this cow parsley near the Langley pond.

I am wondering whether it might be helpful to have a meeting of the Friends of Emersons Green Park shortly, to see how people are feeling about the park and any particular ideas we have for action this year. I also wondered if I should invite a friend from the Feed Bristol site who is an expert on wildflowers and forest gardens and who might have some interesting ideas. Please could you let me know if you would like me to call such a meeting – if there is interest I will.

In the meantime, enjoy the outside. They say there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing!

Chris

A colder wind this week and our lime trees are just beginning to lose their leaves and take on their autumn gold while this female blackbird is finding some easy pickings among the berries.

A less common autumn bloomer is the strawberry tree (Arbutus Unedo) in the orchard – pictured here. The flowers are pollinated by bees and take around 12 months to mature into strawberry-like fruits. The fruits can be used for jam and in Albania, they use them as a constituent of their highly alcoholic raki!

Speaking of bees you may have heard that there have been two sightings of the Asian hornet in this part of the country. This incomer is truly unwelcome. It has the potential to wipe out our natural bee colonies.  Here is a copy of the poster that has been published to alert people about the danger. They have done serious damage in the Channel islands. There are also lots of gruesome videos on YouTube about hornets attacking bee hives if you want to see what they do. The bee is active until November.  Details on the poster if you think you may have seen one.

On a more positive note, it has been a remarkable growing year. Despite a cold spring, some are saying it has been the best year ever on the allotments. And now is the time for fruit. Apple trees around the area are heavily laden.  In the coming fortnight I shall be working an apple press at various venues as part of Healthy City Week. Many thanks to Ralph and Mark for gifts of apples.

Many of you will have seen the heron who samples the ponds  in the park. This bird, which looks like it comes from the age of the dinosaurs, and flies more like a jumbo jet than a swift, is often to be seen in our park. Here is a picture of one of these wonderful creatures, taken, not from the park itself, but about a mile away. I will leave you to guess where. Several herons can regularly be seen in this place along with little white egrets, which only started nesting in the UK in the 1980s and have been spreading up from the south coast.

The orchard has had a good season, and thanks for the appreciative comments about the fruit sent into the site. The herb bed is currently in flower and you can see here, chicory and fennel with the giant cardoon plant, all in bloom.

The apple trees are also bearing for the first time this year, not yet in great quantity, but enough to think that maybe next year we should have an orchard harvest day, to celebrate together, and maybe press some apples!

A few bits of less good news:

One of our new apple trees was hacked down last week. This is a particular tragedy because I rescued this tree from another growing project which was closing and I have known it all its life. I am investigating the cause of this and you may be surprised to hear that I don’t think it was the usual vandals.

The edges of the path below the playpark are also in need of some attention, with a ‘trench’ developing.  I am asking South Glos to look at this as it may become a hazard.

I have also asked the trolley people to remove the three trolleys currently in the watercourses.

Well that’s it for summer. I hope you have a good holiday if you are going away. See you in the park on your return!

Chris

Dear Friends,

Summer is upon us and with the regular rain, everything is growing like crazy. We have been preparing some beds on the orchard and one of them had a great puddle on this morning!

I hope you have helped yourself to gooseberries from the orchard. There are just a few left. Also you might like to check out the jostaberries, on much larger bushes in the central area. These look like gooseberries at the moment but will shortly turn dark red/black like a blackcurrant. They are great in pies and crumbles. Or if you prefer the familiar, there are just a few raspberries ready for picking.

Here is an unusual tree that you might not have spotted. Its leaves are a strange shape and it is called a tulip tree. It is on the playground side of the park close to the path that runs from the LIbrary to Emersons Green Lane.

The moorhens seem to have had a very successful year, with at least two broods being obvious on the Langley pond.

Also does anyone know what these piles of seeds are doing? I noticed them this morning near the Langley pond. I fear they will feed rats, of which we already have plenty.

Finally, we should be pleased to have more help with the orchard if you can spare some time. The next session is  July 23rd at 10am.

Best wishes all – have a great summer.

Chris