Life's a Beech

Two GoodGymers helped Urban Green in Hogdkin Park. I was a bit late filling in for Louise who was unwell and by the time I arrived Max has already starting helping task owner Mike with edge and clearing a path in Hodgkin Park near Benwell Dene.

As we were shoveling the beech tree seed pods Mike explained that beech trees don't produce seeds every year to avoid animals seeing it as a reliable food source and then year 5 years or so will produce a load of seeds which are so numerous they can't go be eaten by the animal which grantee some seed should survive.

We had a tea break half way though and Mike showed us Benwell Dene, which despite me doing a number of tasks with Urban Green in the park I had never seen. It is a beautiful hiden path by the dene which feels completely different to the rest of the park.

We then carried on cutting back and edging another main path in the park, cutting the vegetation back and trimming over hanging trees to make it use to use the paths. Mike also cut back a dead ash tree which had feel vicitum to ash dieback. Which lead to a discussion about if they can breed ash trees which are resistant and how a similar thing had been done with Elm tree which are resistant to Dutch Elm disease.

When we were done it was great to see what difference we had made in the park with the two paths we had worked on looking a lot clearer!