Update From The Commons
I am delighted to report that we have successfully carried out the de-silting work at Brighton Lake that I mentioned last month. The volume of weed in the pond was far greater than we had realised and it was impossible to remove the fish as we had intended. We ended up taking the great majority of the silt and weed out but inevitably quite a lot remains in there; this is not a bad thing at all, as we want the pond to be re-colonised as quickly as possible by invertebrates.
Sadly, although perhaps not unexpectedly, the weather did not co-operate at all during the work and the machines caused a great deal of damage to the grass around the pond. It looks pretty bad at the moment but it will actually be quite easy to sort out once the ground dries out; the problem is that there has been little sign of that happening so far.
There was much discussion at the recent Conservators meeting regarding the future of the areas of grass that were part of the wildflower experiment this year. We had plenty of feedback from the public, both for and against continuing the experiment, as well as surveys and input from various experts.
In the end, the Conservators decided to continue the experiment on the area below Church Rd, which produced by far the best results this year but will be on a reduced proportion of the area. I am also hoping that we will be able to introduce more plant species into the sward and continue to increase biodiversity as well as improving the visual interest.
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