Green Learning

1^st Great Chart Beavers have been learning about pond life. They visited Buxford Meadow to learn about the pond and carried out some river dipping on the Great Stour. They also helped to plant up a new pond near their hut and learnt about the types of plants that are found around ponds. They plan to revisit the pond to see the benefits of all their hard work.

Wild Art
Art workshops have been taking place with the Whole Hog Art Company based at Postling. The workshops have been attached to various events in the Green Corridor promoted through an events leaflet that was partly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and have included sessions making minibeasts, bats and dragonflies. 

The Ashford Girls Brigade rounded off their year of events with a visit to Buxford Meadow to learn about river wildlife and took part in a workshop making crayfish. The 6^th Ashford Beavers kicked off the programme of art workshops by working with local artist Nikki Dennington by making charcoal prints using natural materials. Nikki and Rosemary also worked with the Ashford YMCA and young asylum seekers from the Finding Your Feet programme based in Ashford as on a series of art workshops.

Magical Meadows
Children, cyclists and dogwalkers may have been puzzled to see a large area of long grass developing at one end of Queen Mother’s park, Henwood. Ashford Borough Council has been working with the Ashford Green Corridor project to establish a meadow in the park to provide a vital resource for wildlife and to make the park more interesting and colourful. 

The meadow, which was once regularly mown amenity grassland, was cut in September 2003 by a local agricultural contractor and the cuttings were taken off site and composted. The Millennium Volunteers helped to sow wildflowers into trial areas to establish which species would be the most successful. Further work will be done this autumn to establish wildflowers in this area to make the meadow truly spectacular next year.

Mystical Moths
Light emerald, square spot rustic, flame shoulder are surprisingly exciting names for three of our common moth species. Over the years moths have gained a reputation for being small mottled brown creatures that are easily over looked. Recent moth surveys in Ashford have shown the local community that moths are mystical and magical creatures. Moth man Sean Clancy has carried out two surveys at Aylesford Green this summer using harmless mercury-vapour traps.