The Common took quite a battering this month with several days of storm force winds. Two large and rare black poplars were the saddest losses, the two at the corner of Dorlcote Rd and the cinder track. They tend to lean naturally anyway and they took the full brunt of the westerly winds whistling across the cricket pitch. Some of the fallen logs will be left in situ for habitat creation, the rest moved elsewhere.

Wandsworth wide about 70 trees blew over or had to be felled, making it a busy few days for the borough’s tree team and contractors.

These natural losses emphasise the importance of continual new planting and we’ve done a lot of that recently. We planted another 15 anniversary trees, bringing this season’s total to 35. See how many you can find. They all have blue flashes at the top of their stakes. Some of the planting was witnessed by pupils of Hornsby House school.

Meanwhile, a joint MAC/Friends project has involved numerous volunteers planting around 2,000 whips over 3 weekends in 3 locations - the triangle bed by the playground near Skylark, St Mark’s triangle and the corner of Trinity and Bellevue Roads.

The planting is a mix of dog rose, purging buckthorn, alder buckthorn, spindleberry, holly, gorse, hawthorn, guelder rose, grey willow and hazel. The aim is to provide habitat for pollinators and other animals and also to provide screening from traffic pollution. The gorse is particularly exciting as it will help restore a plant which used to be the predominant one on the Common in the 1800s before clearance began.

Our second big woodland litter pick took place just before the official start of the bird nesting season. And Nick Rutter kindly organised a bird call walk for a visually impaired member. That involved a lot of sitting and listening rather than looking through binoculars and was a new challenge for all of those taking part.