A new pond and life for UCAN
Here’s the latest news from the Uppermill Community Action Network:
This month’s Project Days focussed on further developing our plans to create a pond to continue expanding the range of habitats and biodiversity of the Viaduct Woodland. Having taken advice on the best location, consulted on timing and layout for the pond our team has now completed the task of digging out the pond area and carefully removed any underlying/nearby stones, roots, shrubbery and overhanging tree branches. Regarding timing of building the pond, whilst we could have built the pond at any time during the year, we decided upon autumn/winter as this will enable it to become established much quicker.
The layout of the pond is deliberately irregular as we felt this was in keeping with our organic approach in shaping and crafting our village environment. The size of the pond is approximate 3Mx4M with an average depth of 25cm with gently sloping edges towards small deeper areas up to approximate 60cm. The thinking behind ensuring that there is both a shallower area and a deeper area of the pond is predominantly to give a wider range of sites – a home for different forms of plants, insects and amphibians ensuring that the deeper area offers a place for the wildlife to shelter from any potential predators and to lay their eggs.
Our future Project days will focus on laying a suitable pond liner, adding the water and plants in and around the pond. And the wildlife? Fingers crossed, that this will start to arrive on day one! Other members of our team focussed on one of the flower beds alongside the canal, taking great pride in tidying and turning the soil to make sure its not compacted in readiness for the spring. We removed any thick layers of leaves that were covering the soil whilst maintaining and mulching any thin layers of leaves which should break down and add organic matter to the soil.
Our other tasks from this month included clearing vegetation and our usual litter picking in areas near the canal.
We are always pleased to welcome new members; for anyone interested in getting involved in our voluntary work the March to April 2020 Programme is as follows:-
March – Saturday 7th and Thursday 26th
April – Saturday 18th and Thursday 30th
All equipment is provided by the Canal and River Trust (CRT), stout footwear and suitable clothing is recommended. The usual time and meeting point is 10:00am at the canal bridge on Moorgate Street but this can change. For further information, please contact Peter Killan on 01457 878361 or email peterkillan@hotmail.com
If you’d like to tell us about your group’s work and show off your achievements please send details to hello@saddleworthlife.com We’d love to hear from you
Author: Jude Gidney - Editor
If you would like to share an interesting story, achievement, photo or something you just want to happily shout about please send it in an email to hello@saddleworthlife.com We'd ❤ to hear from you!!
