Update from the Commons
Thank you to all those of you who took the trouble to let me know your views on the wildflower experiment we ran this year next to London Rd. The Conservators will be discussing the future of these sites at their meeting at the end of October and your feedback will be useful to them. The experiment was intended to let us see the potential of these areas, and as such, it has been a complete success. Some sites have produced more interesting results than others, giving us valuable guidance on where to concentrate our efforts in future years. As most of you will be aware, Tunbridge Wells was awarded a Gold Medal by theBritainin Bloom judges this year and the Towns commitment to increasing bio-diversity with experiments such as this played its part in the judges reaching their decision. I will let you know next month what the Conservators decide.
My big task over the next month is the de-silting ofBrightonLake. We will be partially draining the lake and then building an earth ramp to get a large excavator into the pond to remove as much of the silt as possible. This silt has built up over the years from the partially rotted remains of all the pond weed; as you can imagine, it will be a very messy and smelly job! We will be leaving the two ends of the lake untouched so that the invertebrates there can re-colonise the rest of the lake as quickly as possible and we will be doing our best to save as many of the fish as we can, although there will inevitably be some casualties.
I was very pleased to receive an offer from a chap who used to fish there as a lad and is now a fish farmer, to restock the pond free of charge if it is required, as a thank you for the many happy hours he spent there; what a lovely gesture. The actual clearance will only take a couple of weeks and I will then be hoping for rain to get it filled up again as quickly as possible, to judge by the weather we have had so far this year, I shouldn’t be disappointed.
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