26th August, 11am – 2pm

Please join Newbury Environmental & Wildlife Team (NEWT) and Thames Water at our lunch time drop-in event on Tuesday 26th August to have a casual chat about the future of Northcroft Meadows and how it will be managed to benefit wildlife and the local community.

You will find us at the compound located at the junction of Hill Road and Moor Lane RG14 1RT, between 11am and 2pm.

There is limited parking available on site which will be reserved for those with mobility issues. Please use green travel methods where possible, but for those driving, the closest car park is on Northcroft Lane, a short walk away.

We look forward to seeing you there. Any questions email hello@newt.earth

Take a sneaky peak at our new signage we will be getting soon…

We have some more videos to share with you. We have 2 pairs of otters seconds apart, so we must have at least 4 living on site. They seem to be quite a close family unit. Much as we’d love for us to start naming them, we can’t tell them apart! Then we have a badger having a little drink and a muddy fox. All captured in the same place, showing that they share the same habitat. I doubt they are best of friends, but can get along or avoid each other enough to share.

Let us know in the comments what you think about the otter family. Are we watching mum and dad followed by two pups? The second pair seem a bit smaller and a bit more skittish?

Only ducks but this made us chuckle

We had some unexpected fun last week, where a large breach formed on the bank of the river kennet. Not on our land, but just upstream of where we live. It quite suddenly became really big and was growing exponentially more quickly at a worrying rate. It was starting to threaten our homes, so we had to do something and ask questions later. We decided to install a temporary cofferdam, which would at least stop it growing any bigger and solve the imminent emergency. A more permanent solution is now being looked into. We hope to influence this to make sure that enhancing the natural habitat for biodiversity will be part of the design. Which can also offer a more self-sustaining and cost effective solution at the same time.

We also have a new drone to play with so we took some photographs, which you can see here:

Our wetland is incredibly difficult to access, there are parts that we have never seen ourselves. Glimpsing through the trees we could see a lake, but it is so overgrown that it is hard to see its entirety from any where. If anyone else is curious what’s in there, we have made this virtual tour or the lake and surrounding wetlands.

There are two videos one from each side and you can see there is a lake of sorts, that is a patchwork of open water, reedbeds, wet woodland and the odd little island, all surrounded with a broad riparian buffer that makes it so impenetrable to people.

This is perfect water vole habitat!

The little islands are the remainder of footpaths that crossed the wetlands. These were still usable a few years ago, but got swept away by flooding in 2014 and then more so in 2024, with very little remaining of them now.

Undoubtedly our most popular residents, that causes the most excitement for people. We have been monitoring the otters living at Northcroft Meadows for a few years now. Many thanks to Claire Cookson for capturing these videos for us, so we can share them with you all.

Whilst it is lovely that they are here, we do need the rest of the ecosystem to be in place to support this apex predator. Anglers are catching a reasonable variety of species and size of fish still, which indicates the habitat can support them. Because we are always focused on improving the habitat, we tend to focus on its negative aspects. So it is nice to see otters and fish are sustainable together.

We still think there is much to do, and not nearly as much fish life in the river as there historically used to be. One easy practical thing we can do, is to encourage more plant life in the river. Dense foliage in the water provides a haven for invertebrates, such as shrimp and cadis fly larvae. The foliage also provides a refuge for small fish to hide from larger predators, whether that be a fish or an otter. The plants also remove nutrients form the river, improving water quality, and turn those nutrients into the bottom of our ecosystems food chain. If we get this bit right, the rest should fall into place, all the way up to the apex predators at the top of the food chain like pikes and otters.

We were actually surveying for mink and have so far not seen any at all, which is great news!

Hedges are one of the simplest, easiest and most cost effective ways of making a big difference to our most threatened species. Not only do they provide a fantastic habitat for lots of different species, they also sequester CO2 very effectively per square metre of land.

We have several miles of hedge to plant at Northcroft Meadows Nature Reserve and are looking for sponsors to fund it. We do not just put little bare roots in the ground and leave them, we plant and maintain our hedges to the best possible standard, ensuring maximum growth and return on investment. We also enhance through companion planting and small features to create the best possible habitat to support biodiversity. We will send you reports on your hedges progress and you can always come and visit your hedge at the nature reserve.

We have created a standard unit of plants and materials for 25m of hedge that will cost £1000 and sequester approximately 4 tonnes of CO2 per year once fully grown. You can simply choose the number of units you wish to sponsor and then we will then pool the investments to benefit from the economies of scale of placing large orders. Planting happens from November to February and we are planning our 2025 season now. Please get in touch if you would like to sponsor a hedge for your organisation by emailing hello@newt.earth

You may also wish to have your staff come down and help plant your hedge, which is a really fun activity for volunteer release day schemes. We can provide food, all equipment and training. We always have great fun on these days and it is very rewarding to see your completed hedge at the end of the day. We can be flexible in offering whole or half days to suit your needs.

Community Groups and individuals can also get involved as we run hedge laying courses to empower local community groups to take on their own projects, and can offer help and advice on community led projects in the local area. If you have a hedge near you and a few friends interested in creating a great wildlife habitat in your community we can offer help and advice on your project. We are always grateful for anyone who wants to volunteer at Northcroft Meadows Nature Reserve to help out with projects like these too. Please get in touch by emailing hello@newt.earth

Find out more…

January Work Party, Saturday 25th…

We are going to run a volunteer work party on Saturday January 25th. This will be to cut a path through the southern meadow down to the lakes and then back across Moor lane back through the eastern meadow to link up to our existing paths. That then makes a longer circular walk around the meadows and gives some glimpses of the lakes and wetlands. Until we have toilets on site we are on a very practical level only really able to do 3 hours, so will start at 12 and finish at 3. We will then provide a hot meal at 3pm.

The last work party was very sociable and fun, but it would have been really lovely to have a bit of a natter together at the end over a tasty hot meal. We have a local catering business who make delicious food at £6 per head, we are not allowed to charge you for it, but would appreciate a donation to cover the cost. The menu is Chicken or Vegetable Tagine and Rice, Beef or Vegetable Chilli and Rice, with chocolate brownies for pudding. We will need at least 20 people to make this viable and will need to know how many people we are catering for. If you would like to come along, please let us know and your menu choice. Whilst the food is lovely, I don’t really want to end up with 20 portions of leftover chilli to eat by myself 😊

As usual we will provide tools and safety gear, we will give you a safety briefing and any training you need; but if anybody has any grass strimmers or brush cutters that you can bring along that would be very useful. We will have our two strimmers but it was really useful last time to have your extras to get through all the stinging nettles and grass.

For anyone who isn’t able to physically help us, please do feel free to turn up anyway and say hello, or maybe you would like to join us for the social and dinner at 3pm; you are more than welcome!

Location…

I thought it would be a nice idea to revisit some of our earlier projects and give an update on their progress. Very early on in NEWT’s existence, about 4 years ago, we did two hedge laying projects. At that time we had been on a coppicing and hedge-laying course and had started replacing our petrol tools with electric. These were proving far better for working with small parties of volunteers than noisy, stinky petrol tools.

Firstly we approached West Berkshire Council about a hedge at Monkey Bridge Newbury. This was a bit on the mature side for hedge-laying but it wasn’t being looked after by anyone and was becoming a bit of a straggly mess. Much as nature quite likes a mess, the hedge was lacking density so not being as beneficial as it could be for birds and small mammals. Density, especially lower down in the hedge is our key aim for hedge-laying. Traditionally this was important to make a strong hedge for keeping livestock from escaping fields, but now a days density is important to create the best habitat. A dense hedge provides a much safer environment for birds and small mammals, Having density low down in the hedge makes is better for the mammals in particular, like hedgehogs, mice and shrews. It is also good for amphibians like frogs, toads and newt’s and also reptiles like snakes and lizards. Dense hedges will also provide more food in the form of blossom, fruits and insects.

Laying a hedge achieves density as the pruned and lain branches will have many shoots creating way more branches. Parts of the hedge that were coppiced as part of the laying, will have many shoots from the ground creating that lower down density. Finally all the dead wood that is interwoven with the lain hedge, will be host to all the little bugs and critters that our birds and mammals call food.

The second project we did back then, was to help a local community group at Great Shefford laying a hedge. They had been given permission to create nature habitats on a green area separating houses where a balance pond had made a nice wetland area. It was great to help a like minded project to our own and get some practice running a volunteer group, where as we had mainly attended other peoples up to this point. They were a keen and enthusiastic bunch and we had great fun on a damp and grey day. This project is now called Hickson Hedgerows which you can read more about here. I have today been on a little road trip to Great Shefford to get some photos for this update and was pleased to see that hedge is doing great.

I really like the Hickson Hedges project as it just goes to show what anyone can do with any green space near you, creating all these local habitats through small community projects, that start to form into corridors, A friend of mine Sue Millington has taken this to another level, purposefully forging a corridor of connected habitats to give nature a route through Newbury. Such a corridor approach is essential for nature to have routes to migrate along in times of crisis, we can’t just have all our nature holed up in disconnected nature reserves, we need to allow it to migrate as and when it needs to by providing travel routes of nature for them to travel along much like we do roads. You can read more about Sue’s fantastic nature corridor project here https://www.newburyfoe.co.uk/nature-corridor NEWT’s Northcroft Meadows Nature Reserve in Newbury is at one end of the corridor so we are obviously collaborating on getting the maximum benefit from this.

Hedge photos are always a bit hard to show you these things in action as they often just look like a dense mess of branches all over the show, which is vert much the idea really. But hopefully you will be able to pick out elements of what I have just said in the photos below.

For anyone who is into hedge laying and knows what they are doing, I would like to point out that we are not professionals, are mainly self-taught and don’t even attempt being tidy, let alone adopt a particular style of hedge-laying. I think what we do might be a bit like the Somerset style, but more out of accident than anything purposeful. We found that with the maturity of the hedges we worked on, we had little choice but to do things in a certain way, like the larger mature trees will only lay down at a certain angle and there was always going to be way more dead material than you would want in a presentable hedge, but we wanted to use as much as possible of it for the bugs and critters. So please don’t criticise our lack of neat and tidy hedge-laying, being neat and tidy was never our intention.

Monkey Bridge Hedge

I’m going to include all the pictures from the beginning to show you a timeline. Remember what we want to achieve is increasing the density of the hedge, so keep an eye on how much light you can see through it!

The before shots…

Before we started we had a row of densely planted trees. But this isn’t a hedge, just look how much light we can see through it. Now we could simply lop it all off at shoulder height, much like a tractor with mechanical hedge cutter would do, but that isn’t going to get us that low down density we want for the small mammals. This hedge is useless for hedgehogs as it gives no protection or opportunity to nest or hibernate.

Work in progress…

As these trees were quite mature we just did our best to lay the thick branches and keep as much of it connected to the root as possible. It took some persuasion and jumping on top of it to compress it all down.

The hedge strikes back…

Due to the maturity of the trees this wasn’t a typical hedge lay like we’d been shown how to do. We had more than a few bits that broke off rather than lay. So we were pleased as punch when a few months later, green shoots emerged all over the place. Like a lot!!!

and more…

and more…

Density…

By this point it was obvious that nature was appreciating this, the hedge was full of birds feeding and nesting, buzzing with insect life and we started finding an awful lot of frogs! We know that we have hedgehogs, mice and shrews around so I am sure they are enjoying it too. It was quite interesting to see that density of the hedge can frustrate predators like cats and dogs from being able to penetrate the hedge. The birds seem to find this amusing too.

So let’s check out that density now and think back to what this tree line was like before it was laid. How much of a better habitat is that for birds, small mammals, amphibians, reptiles, bugs, critters and Fungi which is enjoying the dead wood infill.

And here are some winter shots to show that even when not in leaf you can see the density of the hedge. If you look closely you can see the many offshoots sprouting from the laid lengths and also coppiced stumps that are now clumps of small new shoots. Even when not in leaf in winter, how much light can you see through the hedge now? Now imagine you are a mouse, bird, hedgehog, shrew looking for a safe place to live that maybe has some on suite snacks; how much more appealing is this that that open tree row?

And here is a birds nest from the summer to prove it!

You can see this row has been left and now has quite big branches looking more like trees. We haven’t pruned this end as it tends to be flooded in the winter, but it is interesting to see the difference to the other section we do prune.

Compared to a much flatter top on the pruned section.

Great Shefford – Hickson Hedges

Hickson hedges were laid the year after Monkey Bridge in the spring of 2022. I’ll do another timeline to show you a similar journey of not being able to see through the hedge anymore. Remember this is all about density! Thank you to the Hickson Hedge team for their photos, you can read more about that project here.

Before…

Work in progress…

There’s me making a mess for other people to clear up as usual! 🙂

Hedge ninja in a raincoat

As you can see we are working in proximity to houses so I would have been very conscious of using noisy petrol tools. The electric tools aren’t silent the chainsaw chain makes quite a whirry noise, but nothing compared to a screaming two stroke engine. The funny thing is that my petrol chainsaw chain must have also made that noise, I just couldn’t hear it before!

We used all the offcuts and scrub to make a dead wood hedge. This is a fantastic habitat for bugs and critters. So it is also a fantastic habitat for anything that likes to east bugs and critters. Perfect for Hedgehogs and Shrews!

Project update…

It was great to visit today and see how the hedge has progressed. There are quite similar species of tree to the Monkey Bridge hedge and they were also quite mature when laid, both are in quite sunny spots, so it wasn’t surprising to see similar results.

The dead wood hedge looking like a bug and critter paradise. This is fantastic Hedgehog habitat

The project team at Hickson Hedges have also been up to a bunch of other stuff! It is great to see a community project make such nice use of a communal green area.

And here we have a new hedge planted, this needs a few years before it can be laid, ideally the stems should be between 2 to 5 cm (1″ to 2″).

Great to see how lovely this space is. I’m sure it is popular with many residents, and the people who live there too 🙂

This is so easy to do

Trees and hedgerows are often planted as part of a housing development or road construction, as they are stipulated in the planning. But once planted the box is ticked and nobody follows up to maintain them. The hedge at Monkey Bridge was planted as part of the new Monkey Bridge construction project, you can see the same along the A34 embankments, I should imagine the hedge at Great Shefford was too. That means we have a fantastic opportunity because there must be loads of these little hedges and green spaces dotted around our communities. These green areas can have their bio-diversity potential massively increased through some easy to do gentle, soft touch management; which would so much help some of our most vulnerable native species!

Is there a hedge near you?

If you have somewhere in your local community that you think could benefit from a similar project, then please get in touch. You will need permission from the land owner, but having a charity such as NEWT backing you with these case studies of previous projects can really help you get permission. NEWT collaborate with local charities, organisations and community groups for the good of all, if you have a like minded project in Newbury please get in touch.

We are currently looking for some help creating educational content for a nature trail. We want to plant some fruit trees and we also have an awful lot of hedges on our new Northcroft Meadows nature Reserve to do something with. They are very old and not in a good state so we are creatively thinking what best to do with them.

If you are a professional who runs hedgelaying courses, then we could offer you a venue to host them for free 🙂

Newbury & Thatcham Green Gym are a fantastic organisation with a great back story for the Green Gym movement as a whole. They do conservation work every Monday morning in nature reserves and public wildlife places in the local area. They are a lovely bunch of people and very enthusiastic hard workers.

They came down to help clear the southern path along the banks of the River Kennet, this had become blocked by fallen trees and was becoming unpassable. They put in a herculean effort in for the few hours they were here and got the path into a much better state. We ere able to reroute the path onto higher ground avoiding some of the more muddy areas and opened up a few windows in the vegetation to allow the reiver to be viewed and appreciated more easily.

Thank you to all who helped, I was very impressed by how much we achieved. Like our other volunteering day clearing the paths in the meadow it was easy to see after a week how much extra footfall the path is getting.

I also noticed we made a fantastic scene as one if the viewing windows of the river looks upstream and I got the pleasure to see the sun setting over river whilst mist swirled above the water, what a fantastic site!

Find out more about Green Gym…