Walshes Park

Alder Brook, Walshes Park, Crowborough, 2 April 2018.

Walshes Park in Crowborough is almost a secret.  A huge, empty secret.  It's a new park, and it's not mentioned in the town guide booklet, and although it's easy to find a map on line you can spend some time looking for any information about how to get in.

I found a passing mention of a small car park eventually.  This car park is very small, with room for 3 or perhaps 4 cars.  Walshes Park itself is large and open, a shallow dome on a south-facing clay slope, crossed by a footpath and a few mature hedge lines.  Paths have been laid out around it, and some of those have been gravelled.  A stream, the Alder Brook, runs along one edge.

There are plans to open up the river bank and increase access.  That seems to be why some mature alders have been felled, though no thought seems to have been given to preserving the local ecology.  Once I knew what to look for it was easy to find some information ... Trees Felled at Alderbrook. The photo above shows where those alders used to grow.

Alder Brook, Walshes Park, Crowborough, 2 April 2018.

Here's another look at the brook.

Anyway .. I went for a look round.  The weather was wet, lots of rain recently.  It was raining when I took these photos.

Gravelled path in Walshes Park, Crowborough, 2 April 2018.

Some of the gravel paths are going to need regular maintenance.  The general feeling is of open ground, but when it's dryer I will have a look at some of the wooded land around the edges.  

Meanwhile .. at the moment it is really wet ...

A rushy slope in Walshes Park, Crowborough, 2 April 2018.

Rushes don't grow in such profusion if the ground is not always moist.

Quite a bit of preparation has been done.

A laid hedge in Walshes Park, Crowborough, 2 April 2018.

I saw more than one carefully laid hedge - this is where thorn bushes have all had had a cut made in their trunks and been bent over, and the stems and branches woven into a lattice of uprights.  It grows into a thick impenetrable hedgerow.   It's not clear to me what this is intended to achieve in this park, unless some grazing is planned for the future.  It takes some time and expertise to make these hedges well.

I'll be back to see how this changes with the seasons.