Ditch the City

Another concert Tuesday in Cardiff as this week Taylor Swift and 70 000 fans take over the City, after the Pink concert last week we made the decision to move the start location back to Sport Wales for this task. It made our active travel much easier with a great direct run and walk.

Tonight's task was a great new one for the goodgym crew to get their teeth into, we were helping out at Llandaff Cathedral and to the background music of bell ringing. The water from the cathedral runs through guttering and out under a bridge, out job was to get in the trench and start clearing it out so that it can be transformed into a bog garden.

Learning ALERT

A bog garden can be created by adapting an existing soggy area, or from scratch, either at the edge of a pond, or as a standalone feature. Permanently damp, it creates an area where moisture-loving plants thrive. These plants are different to those suited to the standing water of a pond, so will attract a host of different wildlife.

A bog garden may be a better option than a pond for families with young children. Like a pond, it should attract frogs, toads and even grass snakes. Dragonflies and damselflies will perch on the taller grasses, and bees and butterflies will flit around the flowers.

wildlifetrust - make a bog garden

The soil in the trench was already springy and the area is surrounded by trees, the graveyard has a range of wildlife including some lovely foxes. This project will help to increase biodiversity even more and we can't wait to see the end results. We had lots of plants to remove, some could simply be pulled up with our hands (gloved of course) whilst others needed to be dug out with trowels. There was some overhanging branches that needed removing and lots of brambles trying to root themselves, all of the green waste could be placed in the grounds in-between trees to put their nutrients back into the soil.

Circle of Life

We bagged up all rubbish that had made its way into the trench, dating things as we went - can you remember ring pull drink cans? All fallen branches and wood was moved to the woodland areas too and the rather LARGE stones were placed on the side of the trench to be used in the next phase of the project. It was a good workout tonight, and everyone of us could see the work that we had just done.