Due to the bad weather earlier this week and forecasted for today Mike the task owner wasn’t sure he would get many volunteers for this week’s community mission. He was pleasantly surprised when five goodgymers came along: Me, Andrew, Paul, Andy and Lydia! Plus, the weather held out for us and luckily it didn’t rain!

Today’s task was cutting down small trees and lower hanging branches from bigger trees to create line of sight into the park, this makes the park more accessible to the local community, for example to mothers with children or older people who might not want to venture into the park if it was enclosed by thick and high vegetation blocking the view in or out.

We set to work cutting down some birch saplings with loppers and hand saws. We were a bit sad for the trees we were cutting down, but apart from the few dead, rotting and fungus ridden trees (which smelt bad!) all the healthy tree should regrow! Mike Showed us one that Andrew had helped cut down in January and was now growing lots of little branches and had loads of leaves.

We tested our tree knowledge and tried to learn the name of different trees in the park. I also learnt that timber isn’t a tree itself and that it’s just the name for felled wood from any tree, and this is why you always shout ‘timber!’ when the tree is about to come down not the type of tree!

About half way through it was time for our usual tea break of tea and coffee in little tin cups! Paul brought Greggs cookies, so we tucked into them (only the double chocolate, the single chocolate cookies were much less popular) – thanks Paul!

Fuelled by tea, coffee and cookies we powered on cutting down the rest of the saplings and sheared down the hedges to the fence height. The huge mountain of cut trees piled up. Mike is going to bring the chipper on Monday and use the chippings from the trees in pets’ corner, so there is no waste.

We marvelled at how much better we could see into the park now and the difference this might make for the users of the park.

If you want to get stuck into cutting down trees tomorrow we are doing the same task for Newcastle Parks but at City Stadium instead of the usually Harbottle park community mission. We are back at St Lawrence and Harbottle Park in three week time!