There are other groups other than Wivey Grows hard at work looking to green up Wivey and are all looking at forming an “umbrella” organisation called Wild Wivey to coordinate these activities. The first of these has been at the Croft Way Car Park. We received the following report which will probably be of interest!
You may have seen some changes on the grass bank to the south bank of Croft Way car park over the last few months and wonder what is going on there. This land is owned by Somerset Council who felled the large ash trees that were there and which had started to suffer from ash dieback, they felled them for safety reasons. This got a few of us to thinking about what might happen to the land afterwards and we asked the Council, via Dave our Councillor, if they might be minded to let the community have a say in what happened to it afterwards. This initial conversation led to us being offered the opportunity to manage the land within the community - an offer we jumped at! We had to put together a plan for the land to obtain approval from them and Brendon Orchards stepped up to sign the paperwork as an established community group.
The plan is to plant replacement orchard trees on the ground that will provide free fruit and nuts for anyone who wants them, under the trees wildflowers will be encouraged to grow. We would be delighted to take donations of suitable plants and seeds and are looking for volunteers to get involved in occasional management sessions (such as scything the bank in late summer). To mark the boundary we have already planted a mixed hedgerow. If you would like to get involved please contact Lena at lenaholland@hotmail.com