Baldock is going green
Come rain or shine, blistering heat or icy cold, there are volunteers out working in woods, pastureland and open spaces virtually every week of the year.
Katrina Nice is very often one of them, carrying out a wide variety of tasks at Ivel Springs and Weston Hills in Baldock. Both sites, along with others in Hitchin, Letchworth GC and Royston, are owned by North Hertfordshire District Council who manage them with help from the Countryside Management Service.
Countryside Projects Officer Dieter Iwan works closely with the volunteers who do much of the physical work at the sites as well as providing invaluable feedback. 'They are marvellous people who do so much. As more people see what is going on they become interested and want to get involved,' he said. 'We need local involvement – it's all very well and good the CMS saying we could do this and have that but we want the people who actually use the site to have some input into the facilities.
'These sites are for the people who live here and we want them to know how valuable they are and enjoy the open informal recreation areas. We would really like families to come along so children can learn about them too.' With his colleagues, based in Ickleford near Hitchin and at St Albans, Dieter works with a wide range of volunteers on various projects, such as making and putting up bird boxes, as well as giving conservation advice, producing walking and cycling leaflets and holding guided walks.
Ivel Springs will be designated a nature reserve by NHDC in May with support from Natural England, which will lend weight to funding applications to bodies such as the Lottery. The Springs, as well as being the source of the River Ivel which feeds the Ouse in Bedfordshire, is a diverse area including woodland, wetland, pasture and allotments.
'A lot of it is marshy grassland which is relatively rare in North Herts,' said Dieter. The pasture needs careful management to prevent it deteriorating into scrub and eventually becoming unkempt woodland – something the public often misunderstand. 'Our countryside is a manmade reflection of our ancestors' farming and other activities,' said Dieter. 'We have to manage it using the sort of techniques that our ancestors employed in the past. They understood that it affects the habitat if you don't graze land. I am often asked why we don't just leave nature alone but you can't do that if you want the diversity we have had for thousands of years.'
Older Baldock residents may remember when part of the Ivel Springs reserve was a household rubbish dump and volunteers still have to clear old bottles and fragments of glass as they come to the surface. When the dump was abandoned in the 1950s the land quickly reverted to wood as ash, hazel and dogwood took hold along with sycamore, a strong East European species that forces other trees out. 'It's a bit of a thug,' said Dieter. 'We have got a programme of selectively thinning out species over a number of years and we will retain ones native to the site.'We are hoping to collect seeds with the volunteers and schoolchildren, then bring them back in a few years to replant them. The kids will see how it all works and genetically the seeds will be the correct ones for the site. This isn't a quick process and people tend to see everything in the short term but woodlands work in two or three generations.'
The Countryside Management Service would struggle to carry out all its maintenance and improvement work without help from scores of volunteers. Katrina joined the friends' group in Baldock a year ago helping to care for the NHDC sites at Ivel Springs and nearby Weston Hills. She wants to encourage more people to come and enjoy the open spaces around the county and perhaps consider volunteering.
'I don't think people are aware that these sites are here and that we are doing things with them,' she said. She has even persuaded her 12-year-old son Alexander to help out – he thought learning how to chop a tree down was rather fun. 'I had done conservation work before because I am interested in that kind of thing,' Katrina said.
'People don't have big gardens now but often they like to get out and do something in the fresh air. It is quite satisfying and it's on my doorstep which is very good because I can walk there and it's helped me get to know the area better. I want somewhere to go that is green and nice and it's good to be able to develop it too.'
Katrina is especially pleased that NHDC and the CMS have recently installed large kissing gates. Her nine-year-old daughter Victoria is in a wheelchair and she can now be pushed around some of the site. Victoria also works on a specially-adapted Council allotment at Ivel Springs, which has raised beds she can reach.
'The site is rough and there is limited access for wheelchairs and pushchairs but we make it as accessible as possible,' said Dieter. 'Most people want our sites to be safe, without motorbikes and with dog bins, but the overriding thing they want is for it to be low key countryside, not a country park.'
Photograph by Brian Sawyer.
