Category: Flowers

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The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) in Perivale Park.

The TCV group organises events around the country and today they came to Perivale Park on a corporate volunteering day with a group of about twenty very enthusiastic people from PwC – and one volunteer dog accompanying  Ben!.  An area of ground‡ on the banks of Costons Brook near to its exit from the culvert in the park had recently been cleared by GEL using an impressive robotic cutting system and it was now ready for replanting.

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Diversity in the Park orchard: A 2024 update.

Back in June 2021, a biodiversity survey of the park orchard meadows was carried out for us by Neil Anderson. Since then the meadows have largely been left alone, with no added nutrients and only a minimum of “weeding”. Time I thought to see what changes of three years of being left mostly to their own devices might have induced. Neil very kindly agree to repeat his survey for us and the results are included below.

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2024 – A good year for Daffodils.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that each new season seems to especially favour some species of flower? This year, it seems to be magnolias, cherries and daffodils that are particularly splendid. Perivale park does not have any magnolias or cherries, but it certainly has a nice display of daffodils in the orchard area – thanks to volunteers who planted them last year.

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News for February, 2024 – every little helps!

A stroll around the park has revealed interesting  new features for this year.

  1. A new rubbish bin in the Longfield meadows, next to the bench where you can admire the lakes. Every little helps – but hey Ealing parks, don’t stop there. Put a few more in!
  2. Two  large swathes in the north Londfield meadow appear to have been seeded. I will try to find out what the mix is (two years ago they put yellow rattle in, but it did not germinate).
  3. The bulbs in the raised beds in the orchard  are showing.  It’s quite a selection we put in last year, so do pop by when the flowers start in a few weeks time.
  4. I could not resist showing the mahonia next to the storage container in the orchard. It’s been there for years, having been planted when the area was a bowling green. It is starting to look very nice this year.

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Creation of a regional park – Some detail. And reference to a lido proposal?

This proposal certainly has caused much discussion and excitement. I managed to find some more detail, whilst we wait for more of the facts surrounding this proposal  to emerge. This is the link and I only pull out a few snippets from that. Perhaps someone well versed in this sort of speak can identify other important aspects? Continue reading “Creation of a regional park – Some detail. And reference to a lido proposal?”

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Treading the grapes in Greenford.

Horsenden Grape and Honey farm first planted their vines on a south facing sunny slope in Greenford about six years ago. This year the harvest of Solaris grapes was expected to be large enough to hold their first ever grape treading ceremony. As a “townie”, it’s not the sort of thing I would have done in my youth and I suspect a fair few readers here have never trodden grapes either!

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A wonderful blush of blue in the park – and its only going to get better.

As I noted before on July 9th, a seed mix containing Flax was planted in the meadow along the Capital ring path. Now, a mere two months later, its produced a fantastic display – and I think the best is yet to come. Do go visit this part of the park and have a look for yourself (its alongside the Capital Ring path).

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Yellow slime mold.

Occasionally, I spot something in the park that  I have never seen below. The photos below were snapped in the orchard area, next to the wood chipping mulch pile. iNaturalist tells me it is from the Genus Fuligo, and is probably the delightfully named “Dog Vomit Slime Mold”. With the frequent recent showers, I expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing in the next month or so.

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The 2023 meadow seed mix goes in – Sunflowers and Flax!

A dazzling variety of high-tech machines were used to prepare this year’s large park meadow for seeding. July is an unusual time to put seeds in, so quite what will happen over the next few months will be interesting to discover. The mix is for birds, and not neccessarily ornamental for humans to enjoy. But this years mix includes sunflowers (Helianthus annum) and cultivated flax (Linum Usitatissimum). The sunflower and flax seeds are 60% of the whole, so in about two years time we might expect a spectacular display of wonderful blue flax, as we saw two years ago in the orchard meadows.

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Is the park playground embarrassed?

When you take family to a park playground, you hope the kids will be safe and can run around happily without concern. We in fact visited Perivale park playground yesterday  (Friday) at around 14.00 with an infant grand-daughter. We did (sadly) have to check for broken glass and syringes (both of which have been seen there in the past), but at that time it was looking more or less tidy. I decided to visit the area again this morning, and you can see what I found from the photos below.

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General nature walk, July 8th, 2023 at 10.00 led by Neil Anderson.

Each year, we normally have a nature walk close to or in the park. Recently these have been organised by the the Ealing Wildlife Group and this year,  there will be walk on Saturday July 8th. The meeting place will be on the bridge over the Brent, just past Coston’s nature reserve at 10.00, led by Neil Anderson. He tells me that “provided the weather is fine, the emphasis will most likely  be on flora & flying insects such as butterflies & dragonflies. Suspect it will be quiet for birds but I won’t ignore any we come across (Grey Wagtails successfully bred along the Costons Brook in the park).”

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The orchard meadows in June – Achillia and Viper’s bugloss.

When the orchard garden project was being planned five years ago, four meadows were created with nutrient-poor soil to encourage a different diversity of flowers to adopt the area. The nutrient-free aspect was achieved by putting down a thick bed of sand into each of the meadows. These were then sown with a perennial seed-mix and planted with bulbs. Of the latter, the gladioli and some dwarf narcissus made a come back this year. So, now in June, what is happening?

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