Category Archives: Volunteer work

Bristol Planners volunteer at the lilypond   

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KWAG brings volunteers up to speed on the tasks for the day.

The estate and KWAG was fortunate to host a team-building event by officers of Bristol City Council Development Management team on Wednesday 25th October. We’d managed to arrange with Kingsweston School for a group of 25 volunteers to access the area of the Georgian walled gardens around the lily pond on Napier Miles Road as the latest in our campaign to stem the tide of neglect and restore the much-loved and historic site.

The work overseen by KWAG focussed on the three strips of garden surrounding the pond, the removal of the dead box hedging, digging-up of brambles, and the felling of self-seeded saplings and shrubs. The formal box hedges succumbed last year to an onslaught of box moth caterpillar that ravaged Bristol. Here it left just a single bush alive, and that just barely. The brambles and saplings have taken advantage of the lack of maintenance since the school returned the pond area to Council Property department.

The south walk along the pond before and after the day’s events.

We were lucky enough to take advantage of the west lodge at the pond for bag storage as the team were briefed on the tasks for the day and health and safety. It was impressive, the way that the volunteers engaged with the work and threw themselves into it. Despite an unpromising weather forecast, the rain held off until the dying minutes of the event before 4pm and we even enjoyed some sun.

Tired Council volunteers pose at the end of the day outside the lodge.

We were lucky to have one of the city ecologists and tree officers as part of the team who were able to advise us on the work. The ecologist was particularly in demand when digging disturbed dozens of Common Newts and other amphibians settling down amongst the roots. These were relocated to safe areas around the pond.  

Huge inroads were made on clearance, massive progress in restoring the area. Whilst the job wasn’t completed in its entirely, the magnitude of the job was enormous and what was achieved was epic in scale. We are extremely grateful to all the Council officers who turned out for the event and made such an impact. Despite the wet finish everyone enjoyed the event and stuck with it until the very end. The space that’s been revealed is now a blank canvas to re-plan the gardens, and buys precious time for KWAG to plan a viable new future. Thanks too to Kingsweston School for hosting us, and parks and other departments of the Council for enabling the event.

Similar views of the west side of  the lilypond in 1898, and before and after recent volunteer work. The pond edge is again discernible and brambles threatening the lodge have been cut. 

…As a postscript, KWAG returned to make some investigations of the pond and have managed to clear some of the saplings alongside the road so visitors can glimpse progress on the garden areas beyond.

Some clearance at the lilypond has allowed us to find the waterline and judge the extent of the tree growth. 

Persevering  in Penpole Wood

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We’ve noted before that the summer months make working parties much harder, and last month was no exception. Despite a good turnout and a couple of welcome new faces we didn’t manage to finish off the area as planned. This was more to do with the amount of work left being more than we first judged. Nevertheless, the last few months have seen a significant erosion of the cherry laurel’s dominance in this area.  

The change in the  view east, back towards the house, between May and this month. 

It’s clear from historic maps of Penpole Wood where the problem stems. The area we’ve been tackling is just outside, to the east, of the historic boundary of Penpole Wood. Here the Southwell family sought to blend the landscaped parkland into the natural ancient woodland by planting specimen trees and between them fashionable laurel bushes. They were, it is believed, intended to create a continuous blanket of evergreens below the picturesquely scattered specimen trees. Some of those trees are likely to be those that still surround the area, but the cherry laurel has since grown wild, suffocating anything else in the area and even obscuring historic paths.

Diagram showing the 1772 estate survey with current features of the felling area annotated.   

The slope now looks bare and barren where we’ve passed through, a legacy of around 250 years of laurel suffocating the area. We intend to replant trees in this area this autumn, to better integrate it back into the native woodland. So, back again this month to try and finish this tricky area! Thank you to everyone who came out to help last month and we hope to see you all again this weekend. Perhaps we will finally get it finished…  

A big oak at the top of the slope remains as laurels retract over the last four months. 
The view up-slope from the middle path thorough Penpole Woods. 


Working Party Progress: Turning things over

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The area before final preparation and digging-over.

Since we started work on the View Garden area alongside Napier Miles Road a number of people have asked what we were going to plant there. Our initial ambition was only to get on top of the undergrowth that was threatening the wall, but ongoing work allowed us to think more ambitiously. Over the following months, one of our volunteers, Mike, has been diligently forking through the whole area getting rid of roots and breaking up the ground ahead of a planned seeding of the area as wildflower meadow. He was joined last month in a final push to get the ground prepared for sowing.

Because of the wet weather this year things had been delayed a little, but we had a good turnout of volunteers on Saturday 13th of May to dig over the whole area again and get rid of the last of the nettle and bramble roots that would have quickly undone any work on the new planting.

Volunteers dig-in with the task alongside Napier Miles Road. 

By the end of the day we’d managed to dig and rake-over most of the area, but not quite all. Everything was finally polished off the following weekend and a specialist mix of wildflower meadow, and hedge mix for the shadier areas, was sown. The weather since proved providential, and the seeds were quickly watered in by the rain, with seeds already starting to germinate just a week later!
 
Thank you to all our volunteers on this, and thanks to Avonmouth & Lawrence Weston Wind Turbine Fund for grant funding the seed. We’ll try and keep you update with the results of this project as it develops.    

The tilled ground a few weeks later. Look closely and you can see the green shoots coming up. 

Back-tracking in Penpole Wood

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Two years ago KWAG built a new set of steps on the northern edge of Penpole Wood where the pubic right of way from Mancroft Avenue enters the historic estate. We’re glad to say this has held up well and has been welcomed and well used since we finished it. It’s an important link for students from Lawrence Weston heading from school on Penpole Lane. But the condition of the path below them had become horrendous, particularly this year where rain and mud had rendered it virtually impassable.

Recognising the issue we decided to extend our step work to connect back to Mancroft with a new well-drained path. A special project team was put together under the organisation of Jim Ellis, and materials bought. The first task involved digging out the old path, which came out easily. There was the unusual discovery of long sections of old carpet three inches under the mud, no doubt thrown down at some point to try and improve the muddy conditions. After cutting out another few inches of soil we constructed a timber structure to contain a hardcore and rubble base that will hopefully promote drainage. Gullies either side are hoped to allow water to drain away without collecting on the path. Everything was finished with a good covering of self-binding gravel.

We’ve had some positive feedback since the project was completed, but the litmus test will be next winter. Thank you to Ian, Simon, John, Colin, and  of course Jim, who successfully project managed the whole thing.   

Working Party Progress: Dealing with dumping… 

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While the other volunteers work away in the woods a couple deal with the verge.

KWAG hasn’t often got involved in litter collection across the estate as we know there are locals and walkers who often do this, and the Probation service continue to carry out community service collections. However, one area has been a persistent pain: the layby on Penpole Lane. This regularly gets fly-tipped and the Council have recently erected a timber fence to try and inhibit illegal dumping. This, unfortunately, hasn’t worked, and one of last month’s working party aims was to clear the old quarry areas of rubbish.

The flytipped area before and after work.

We found it in a poor state, with binbags, and loose waste strewn about as well as the ubiquitous used mattress! We had a great turnout for the event, so good that it only took just a couple of hours to bag-up everything and leave it for collection in the layby. Unfortunately, just a fortnight later, more flytipping had been dumped in the same area. This has also been cleared away and we aim to keep monitoring the area.
 
Thank you to everyone who came out to and contributed to one of our best ever attended sessions, especially the new faces who came to join working party efforts.

…and some tree trimming 

The second target for volunteers on our Working Party was a scrubby area alongside Penpole Lane, not far from the litter collection. Since the 1960s this area, once grassland, had been colonised by ash and sycamore. Most is in a poor condition, being multi-stemmed, damaged by cutting in the early years of their growth. Having persevered through many probable attempts to keep on top of them they have grown into a thicket along the roadside.

Looking south along Penpole lane showing the impact of recent work. 

Our plans were to undertake “natural spacing” or “haloing” to thin out this area, cutting out the weedier and less healthy saplings to allow the better specimens to thrive. This has the secondary advantage of opening up glimpsed views from the main path along Penpole Point to the hills of Somerset to the west. From an historical perspective, these were once greatly admired by visitors to the estate.
 
Working carefully, warry of bird nesting season, we threaded through the copse gradually felling small saplings and raising the crown to allow sunlight in. Whilst the impact of the work might not be immediately obvious, it has helped open the area up and should prevent the further encroachment of scrub onto the remaining meadowland.

Looking across the area from the path to Penpole Point. 

Working Party Progress: Finishing at the View Garden 

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Volunteers concluded work on the old View Garden in February, with a final tidying-up of the laurels and woodland, and a focus on preparation for wildflower meadow planting. We undertook natural spacing with the woodland area, selecting the most viable saplings and shoots of trees and clearing around them to allow them to thrive in the future. This woodland management technique is the same as we started with the Forestry Commission in Penpole Wood in about 2015 and should ensure strong growth and positive regeneration of the woodland floor. We hope that this area, the glasshouse wall and verge, is back as it was when we last passed through in 2016.

incredible to think that it’s just been seven years since the glasshouse wall was last cleared by KWAG volunteers. 

A few stray laurels were felled to complete work at the corner of Kings Weston Lane and Napier Miles Road, whilst around half of the volunteers took to digging out the roots of brambles long the verges. This will be critical in ensuring that the wildflower seeding planned for the end of this month has the best chance of thriving. We’re grateful to our regular volunteer Mike, who has undertaken to return week after week to get on top of the job and organised the specification and funding for the seeding project.

A couple more cherry laurels are cleared back from the edge
The view from Kings Weston Lane showing the removal of laurels and the preparation work along Napier Miles Road, for the sowing of meadow seed.