Wildlife Circus

Last week saw the appearance of John Gringrod at the Richmond Literature Festival to discuss his latest work 'Outskirts'. It  features his upbringing on the 'last road in London' alongside the Green Belt in New Addington. John presented some Green Belt factoids: Green Belt comprises 13% of the total land in England to stop towns merging formerly known as the Green Girdle. Octavia Hill first coined the phrase Green belt in  1882. New ribbon development started eating at the countryside after WW1. The Campaign for the Protection of rural England (CPRE) first proposed the Country Code in 1934.  (BTW they have a London branch, which is keeping a close eye on London's Outskirts). Patrick Abercrombie designed the Green Belt ring of a width of 5 miles around London, housing was planned for the future on designated areas of white land now all used up. There is still white land on the A-Z although much of these areas are electrical installations, MOD land and other  pre...

In my spare time, I go to a list of important trees that I keep  in my notebook, and upload their details (a short description, grid reference and a photograph) onto the website of the Woodland Trust.  I  find them walking around the borough, they are usually trees of more than '3 hugs'. The WT depends on volunteers to submit information about important trees but there is someone who will come and validate the record in the 'fullness of time'. Interestingly, someone has already uploaded  veteran and notable trees in the south of the borough, although the largest willows that grew along the Hogsmill near the A240  were felled last year and would have had girths of >4 hugs (the remaining trees are 4.66 and 4.45m). There are ancient ash trees on Tolworth Court Farm Fields,  altogether a different classification. Ancient trees are further defined by their age as being > 400 years and our nearest most splendid examples are found on Ashtead Common. Th...