For any posts about any of our campaigns or projects.
In the recent sunny weather the plants have certainly grown! What was bare earth a couple of months ago has now been covered by green foliage, amongst which are a few attractive flowers including Purple Loosestrife (above) and Great Willowherb (below).
The remaining plants are much less showy, but still important.
With the recent lack of rain the river channel, while extremely low is still flowing.
We look forward to continue monitoring the site, and how it develops in the coming years.
Over the last few days a lot has been happening at Glassmill Pond, Glassmill Lane, BR2 0EL, with two events! The first on 23rd June was part of the Three Rivers Clean Up campaign. Volunteers cleared some 6 bags of rubbish for pond, including many golf balls which had ‘escaped’ from a golf driving range upstream. They also managed to cut back willow tree branches that had fallen into the river channel. If it had not been removed it could have blocked the river with resulting local flooding. At both events we were very pleased to welcome the Mayor of Bromley, who put on some wellies and got stuck in.
Some new flowers were spotted, just a sample of the many plug plants we dug in a few months ago.
And four days later on 27th June Thames21 organised a community event, as part of their London Rivers Week programme. Yet more volunteers turned up. This time the first task was to reposition some large stones, in order to raise water levels next to the pond inlet, thereby making it more possible for fish to migrate further upstream.
They then had a chance to monitor the really small things normally hidden in the river bed, but which are indictors of good water quality. To do this they had to stir the gravel and using a net collect a sample, and study their catch very closely.
By this means they came across loads of tiny immature sticklebacks. Also the larval stage of; olive mayfly, leeches, hoglouse, gammarus, blackfly larvae and some very small worms. All these are potential food of others, including dragonfly larva. Indeed a few adult dragonflies and demoiselles were spotted flying over the pond. This is indicative of the new arrangements having a great impact on improving the biodiversity of the river.
Finally they all pulled together to gather a more unnatural catch, in the form of a shopping trolley and a Lime bike which had been thrown into the pond.
However we left another shopping trolley in place, as it was being used by a Moorhen mother for her nest, along with some eggs, five when this taken earlier by Chris Holly.
A very satisfactory end to these events. We are looking forward to organising more events on this site. To find out more about this site and our exciting plans for the future of this river please go to our Glassmill Pond Restoration project page.
We have just heard that our application, for nearly £20k funding for our ‘Love Bromley Palace Park‘ project has been successful. We had applied to Bromley council for this from the borough-wide Platinum Jubilee Fund. It is the intention to make this park, with its historic features and wonderful setting, better used and appreciated by the public. With the council selling the rest of the site this is even more important, as is preserving good public access at all times, including during any construction phase. All Bromley council staff will have moved from here to the new Civic Centre later by end of 2024.
Below is the view across the Lake towards historic Bromley Palace, taken in 2015. This view is now obscured by tree saplings. We aim to restore views such as these as part of our project .
Items to be installed include-
In parallel with this we will be organising monthly volunteer work parties, in which we will improve the biodiversity of the park, and enhance the setting of various Grade 2 listed features*. You can find details of these work parties on our Events page.
*The repair of these listed features are not part of this project.
To find out more about our project please go to Campaigns/Bromley Palace Park
The construction of the new pond has now been completed. While the new layout looks great, it will still look a bit ‘raw’ until the next phase of the project is completed. This will include; planting, adding diversity to the river features, managing vegetation, and seeding gravel. We will need to wait for a couple of months however, to allow the ground to stabilise in the new structures, before starting this.
As can be seen in the above image the enhanced river channel goes off to the left had side, separated from the improved pond area by an earthen bank, reinforced by hazel posts, permeable membrane and hessian. A large pipe through this bank will deliver more water into the pond during high river flows. There is a similar earthen bank at the other end of the pond. The previous weir boards have been permanently removed to allow fish, eels etc to freely move to and from the rest of the Ravensbourne catchment.
On a rather overcast day several volunteers from Foresters Financial, a company based in central Bromley, gave up their time to repaint some existing play furniture. While much of the existing play equipment will be replaced as part of the refurbishment project these items will be refurbished and retained.
After carefully cleaning the metalwork, and then painting it with primer, they finished off with a lovely coat of green paint. Some small parts were also painted black. A much improved look indeed, which will be appreciated by local children.
Their efforts follow on from a previous session, in which they volunteered to clean and paint the inside of the sports pavilion nearby. This has made that space much better for local children’s football club AFC Shortlands.
