For the last few years we have held work parties during Winter on a Sunday morning (due to the darker evenings) from 10:30 onwards up until about 13:00 but in Spring and Summer reverted to Thursday evenings from 7:00 pm until dark. We have tried a few variations too.

What we’d like to know is would you volunteer or volunteer more often if we settled on a Sunday all year round? Have you any better suggestions? Whilst we treasure our volunteers we don’t want to wear them out, nor drive them away!

The activities involved can be coppicing trees and shrubs, planting additional herbs such as tansy, clearing or excavating ponds and scrapes, planting saplings, putting up nest boxes, and generally helping improve the biodiversity of the assorted components (scrub, copses, meadows, arable field and wetland) that make up Rawcliffe Meadows. If you have any specialist skills such as fundraising, design or woodland crafts we can easily make use of them too.

You don’t necessarily have to do things as a part of a diarized work party, we have a number of people who do repairs or collect litter as and when they are available. If you’d prefer to do this, also let us know, we keep a log of volunteer hours to advise potential funders.

What’s best for you? If you don’t want to be added to our circulation list, please state.