Trees and Wildlife

2009:

• Set up the trees and wildlife group, which subsequently amalgamates with the West Oxford Wildlife group.
• Mass tree planting.  LCWO members, school children and Woodcraft Folk, plant 640 trees with the support of the Forest of Oxford Charity. The school children nam the three tree planted areas “Wiggly Waggly Wood”, “Peace Wood” and “The Wild West Wood”. The trees will sequester around 64 tonnes of carbon dioxide and help to reduce flood risk by absorbing water.
• Set up Kingfisher Corner.  The group sets up a new wildlife area, again with support from the Forest of Oxford, on the site of the former playground in Botley Park. Named ‘Kingfisher Corner‘, the site has been planted with many varieties of native trees, wildflowers and shrubs.  Find out more about Kingfisher Corner here.

2010:

• Set up Hogacre Common Eco Park on land leased from Corpus Christi College. The rent is a jar of honey per annum and the site plays host to a beautiful community orchard, tasty summer cafe, OxGrow, small wind turbine and several bee hives.  Find out more about Hogacre Common Eco Park here.
• Plant 1100 trees at Hogacre.

2011:

• First Hogacre Common Eco Park Harvest Fest.  500+ attend.

2012:

• Hogacre heritage orchard.  Hogacre wins £75k grant and plants orchard of 85 fruit trees.  Creates one of Oxfordshire’s most important heriage orchards and wins OCVA Environment Award 2012 for making the ‘biggest positive impact on the local environment’.

2013:

• Oxford Festival of Science BioBlitz confirms the importance of tree & bulb planting: 394 species are identified in Botley Park, 101 of which are in Kingfisher Corner, including the picture-wing fly – the rarest fly recorded during the BioBlitz.

2017:

• West Oxford Tree Trail.  Following hot on the heels of the beautiful Hogacre Common Eco Park Tree Trail, LCWO designs its own tree trail, which it launches at West Oxford Community Primary, with a free map to every child.  Find out more and download the maps on the Oxford Tree Trails website here.
• Offer free accessbile guided Tree Trail walks to local residents as part of our ’10 years of LCWO’ celebrations – plus host a Teddy Bear’s picnic at Kingfisher Corner.

2018:

• One minute bird feeder how to video.
• Host free dawn chorus walks around Kingfisher Corner with bird expert Dom Woodfield.  Otter spraint identified at Tumbling Bay.
• Funded to commission BioScan to do a new ecological survey of Kingfisher Corner, which allows the development of a 3 year management plan of the area, working closely with Oxford City Council.  Both survey results and management plan can be found here.

2019:

• Begin a partnership with HedgeOx to help increase support for hedgehogs in the West Oxford area and beyond.  Letter-writing campaign to 29+ local fencing companies, asking them to join our HedgeOx Hog Hole Roll of Honour and promote hedgehog holes in their fencing.  Read more here.
• Building on the West Oxford Tree Trail, create a tree trail in Florence Park, on the other side of the city of Oxford (download it here).
• Kingfisher Corner relaunch, 27 April 2019, and creation of new display boards to tell the story of the area and introduce visitors to its inhabitants.
• Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund to work with Osney Lock Hydro on ‘Unlocking the power of our river’.  First part of project is to run a river-inspired Midsummer Meander in West Oxford which is a great success.  Run a junk workshop with artist Groovy Su at West Oxford Fun Day, to create a display at the Lock site during the Meander; ask members of the community to nominate their favourite river wildlife to appear on the human sundial forming the second part of this project. Full details available on the project page.
• Funded to buy 500 trees to plant on Oatlands Rec.  Planting postponed by the extensive flooding.

2020: This year’s plans have unsurprisingly been significantly affected by Covid-19, but we are currently working on the following:

• Local artist Josie Webber is working on mosaics for the second phase of ‘Unlocking the power of our river’.  These mosaics feature different local river wildlife, as chosen by West Oxford residents, and will form the human sundial at Osney Lock Hydro.
• We have teamed up with Earthwatch and local wildlife group Bulstake Naturehood Group to create a new West Oxford Naturehood Group on Earthwatch’s Natirehood platform.  Launch of this coming in October 2020.  Join the new Naturehood Group by signing up to Naturehood here and searching under groups for ‘West Oxford Naturehood Group’.
• We are still hoping a tree planting may be possible in winter.  We are working with Julian Cooper at Direct Services, who has the trees waiting for us from last year’s delayed planting.  We will obviously follow all guidance on what is and isn’t appropriate with Covid-19, and will plan accordingly.