The Friends of Warnham Green have collected their wildflower meadow seeds from the Finchley Pollinators as part of their plan to plant 600 Mini-Meadows in Barnet. Now we need to actually clear a space. After a bit of discussion about where to put the meadow, we agreed to dig into an area of brambles we'd chopped down earlier in the year, but not dug up the roots from. The soil is relatively poor quality and the patch gets a fair bit of sun, unlike the wildflower area from earlier in the year, but the brambles had regrown at least a metre.

The plan - from the Finchley Pollinators - is to clear and weed a patch, wait a month, then dig any regrowth, then sow. So we got stuck in to create a 1m x 3m rectangle (approx) with a bit of extra clearance around for movement and to prevent overshadowing from the brambles.

With David, Marsha and myself, we made light work of it. We chopped ('minced', according to our conservationists) the brambles and nettles down to the ground, then used forks and a spade to dig up what we could. We left a bit of grass, a thistle and some dandelions around the edge of the area, and marked it with some of the fallen lime branches from earlier in the summer. And we'll be back next month to finish the job!