Wildlife Circus

  Last night, I attended a meeting to determine key issues in an update of a certain Climate Strategy 2030. In my break-out group, there seemed to be little consensus about drainage issues related to use of plastic turf and sealed surfaces in gardens.  Any updated strategy,  is written in the context of  an 'emergency', which this particular borough declared in 2019. As I look around my own borough, I see a number of recently missed opportunities, including the one pictured above.  It is one of a pair beds, each end of an LTN. The opposing bed does indeed have SuDs capability. You can read more about above and below ground infiltration here, which was a commentary on the Cambridge Road Estate urban-drainage-systems . So why is the larger one, non-SuDs? Why have several trees around the school boundary in the same road - been felled - inevitably affecting the local hydrology? I begin to wonder if the SuDs was created as an offset for this tree loss. So there is no actual gain.

    All photos Phil Renton   Richard Jefferies lived in Tolworth for five years, from 1877-1882, at 296 Ewell Road, then known as No. 2 Woodside, where there is now a blue plaque to remember him by. During this time he wrote some of his most important essays, collected in the book Nature Near London (see how he has been celebrated locally here tolworth-treasure ) Andrew Rossabi, President of the Richard Jefferies Society (pictured in the hat above) gave a talk about the writer's time in the area to a captivated audience at Surbiton Library in September 2018. The talk was followed by a short walk to the Richard Jefferies Bird Sanctuary, where an elm tree was planted in memory of this important and much-loved Victorian naturalist and author.    This is what it looked like 18.5.2019 and it did very well until .... 11.1.2022 when it was found vandalized; effectively coppiced With some aftercare including bramble clearance, it began to regenerate and today looks like this...