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This course was one that was been salvaged by Julian from the Opens Space program. It was particularly close to our heart because of the big renovations in the SSP WildLife Area that will come this autumn with Cleaner, Greener, Safer award works.
We have been here before for the previous bout of training and we relished the chance of spending some more time in the Stave Hill Ecological Park.
In addition to the theory and formal part, the course offered the opportunity to see some of the solutions and experiments, tried and tested in the Ecological Park. Rebeka (the Stave Hill Ecological Park director and our lecturer) was as usual providing a High quality tour of the facilities put in place in the Park. In the course of the years, mostly under her direct supervision, Stave Hill had experimented with a number of solutions for making effective use of the often limited resources available to nature conservation groups.Recycling, constructing fostering habitats for the wildlife has to be integrated with the need of providing a focal point of interest for visitors and some inbuilt resistance to the wear and tear caused by our densely crowded and changeable urban landscape. Sometimes simple locally adapted solutions works better than fancy, resource intensive developments.
Below is some example of a log pile that can also be functional and attractive and provide an heaven for invertebrate, small mammals and reptiles, of used carpet used to create a moss garden, some discarded wood used as roost box for bats and a composting site made of materials that will eventually compost themselves.
Aesthetics have also their important part and a little artistry may transmogrify "bug hotels" into towers that could find easily place in modern art galleries.
As part of the course we also took part in a guided tour of the larger, outlining section of the Park. it is a large area, often inappreciably so from the approaches, and the amount of work and remodelling has been impressive by any standards.
The emphasis was here in the public perception of the site as an essential component of the future viability of the site.
The quality of the work constructing the pathways where the general public will be most concentrated are in itself a difficult proposition to tackle. One of the best solutions was to flank the paths with a recycled dry stone curb. This allow the formation of side-walk beds, where more popular and appreciated type of plants can be fostered and clearly enjoyed by the majority of visitors and less obtrusively separated by a low fence, a type of habitat more conductive to wild life development.
The dry wall may also offer (and sometimes can be doubled with the formation of an inner flower bed) a habitat of it own, offering chance for epiphyte, mosses, lichens, ferns and rarer plant to find a hold.
The entrance of the Park has been given a particular importance as it set the tone for the rest of the visitor experience. The area evolved along years and the substantial investment used to create it underlines how the interface between the scientific conservation imperatives and the public perception must be balanced and kept high in the list of priority of any urban nature conservation efforts.
The course was incredibly useful and was very much enjoyed by all participants and we all left with fond memories.
Lastly would not be fair to leave Stave Hill ecological Park without some image of the beauty of the place and the important role it has in making the life of the residents of the long built over Rotherhithe peninsula a little bit better, harking back to the times when the area was a vast tidal marshland inhabited by countless wild life and the ghosts of ancients sacred traditions.
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