Boundary Brook Nature Reserve
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Spring 2025 Newsletter
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Spring Open Afternoon at Boundary Brook Nature Reserve
1 to 4pm Saturday 22nd March 2025
We are delighted to invite you to our Open Afternoon with Friends of Larkrise School.
Do join us for our Public Open Afternoon, all welcome.
Come and enjoy an afternoon of nature activities on the reserve amidst the beauty of spring. Join us for Spring tonic making, Mindful Photography, Nature Bathing, Wildlife Walks, Art in Nature, Poetry and more.
All these events are free. Please book to reserve a place so we can plan for numbers, or just turn up on the day. Email info@ouwg.org.uk
Hoping you have had a peaceful and restful time over the festive season.
Down at Boundary Brook Nature Reserve we are busy with winter conservation work preparing for spring – clearing paths and maintaining meadows, hedgelaying and coppicing, creating new wetland scrapes and working on the pond edges. We have some wonderful events for you to join in. We hope to secure funding this spring for a new shelter for young people’s groups on our Forest School site and offer ways for young people to be involved in its design and construction.
Scarlett Elf Cap at the reserve
If you have any photos, stories, poems inspired by visiting Boundary Brook Nature Reserve please send them to us to be included in our next OUWG winter newsletter by 20th January 2025. We would love to include them.
With thanks
The OUWG Team
Check out the 2025 Winter Events @ Boundary Brook Nature Reserve
All these events are free to members of OUWG. Please book for these events so we can plan for numbers. Email info@ouwg.org.uk
Boundary Brook Open day and AGM Saturday 8th June 2024
Guided walks, Art in Nature, wildlife trail.
2 to 3 pm OUWG AGM RSVP papers please email
3 to 5 pm
Art in nature Inverterbrate ID Nature walks Peg/spoon carvingOpen to all, please Email us if you’d like more information.
Great News! A Grassland Enhancement and Living Library Project in the heart of East Oxford.
Oxford Urban Wildlife Group at Boundary Brook Nature Reserve in East Oxford is enhancing meadows, glades and grassland, increasing biodiversity, providing a haven for invertebrates and other species, and creating Living Libraries to inspire the public to learn about grassland flora and their importance, thanks to support from the Trust for Oxfordshire’s Environment.
Oxford Urban Wildlife Group have received a £6160 grant from TOE with funding from Grundon Waste Management Ltd through the Landfill Communities Fund to carry out the Grassland Enhancement and Living Libraries project over the next year.
This project uses planting schemes based on local environmental records to increase abundance and diversity of grassland floral species, specific to meadows, wildflower mounds and wetland margins on this popular local nature reserve, to provide a haven for wildlife, with specific thought to invertebrates especially pollinators which are facing the loss of their habitats. Living libraries will be created using recycled plastic timber to build bespoke designed growing beds to be illustrated with art work and botanical information, about the floral species, to draw the attention of visitors to identify grassland species they may then discover growing in situ. The all weather path network on site will be extended to enable access to all visitors across the site.
Male brimstone on primrose, Ragged Robin and Fox on Hay Meadow
The OUWG Chair Helen Edwards said “We are looking forward to starting our grassland enhancement project and inviting volunteers to join us in restoring the quality of our grassland, sowing seed, and propagating grassland plugs for planting out across the site. Following the success of our recent woodland understorey enhancement we know it is important to offer this opportunity for volunteers to become involved in vital conservation work, improving habitat diversity, increasing abundance, and feeling stewardship of small locally managed nature reserves which increase the cohesion of green spaces across the city. The previous TOE funded Ponds, Glades and Woodlands project helped us to re-establish our thriving habitat mosaic so we can now focus on the grassland in these ways. We are excited that the Living Libraries will be able to inspire local people to learn about the vitality of nature as home for wildlife and become immersed in the reserve, act for nature in their own gardens and pass on nature connection down the generations. We hope the Living Libraries will be a beautiful source of information supporting connection in nature, for the benefit of people and wildlife across the city which we may pass on to other nature groups. Being able to use recycled plastic in constructing the libraries enables the reserve to support initiatives that help to reduce the amount of plastic going to landfill.”
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Ben Heaven Taylor, TOE’s CEO, said “We were thrilled to award OUWG a grant for this ambitious project. TOE has supported projects at Boundary Brook Nature Reserve previously and the projects have been delivered well. We are very impressed by the way the group engage with the local community, the number of volunteers who roll up their sleeves to get involved, and by the range of well-attended events organised. The Living Library concept is a great way to teach people identification skills and we are confident that this project will clearly demonstrate how nature can recover and the benefits of appropriate management. We look forward to seeing the results of everyone’s hard work next summer – good luck to everyone involved.”
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The grassland enhancement is designed in consultation with site and local environmental records and responds to the ecological aspects of the site; sunlight, shade, woodland edge, hydrological profile, wetland and drier areas of grassland, chalky and alkaline areas and pond margins, with wildlife in mind, particularly invertebrates as well as other species. Plants have been chosen to support all stages of wildlife, especially invertebrate life cycles, including species of ecological significance on site such as the brown hairstreak and green hairstreak butterflies and slow worms. The project will seek to ensure thriving grassland with plants producing pollen over a long season, creating healthy soil structure to draw down carbon, plants with vegetation persisting through winter providing shelter and those with seed heads for birds.
The Living Libraries as well as being deeply engaging for visitors will also enable us to propagate plants sourced locally as plugs, and from seed, so we can reduce the use of plastic pots, compost substrates and compost.
Boundary Brook Nature Reserve Features on Country File
Boundary Brook Nature Reserve featured in BBC Countryfile’s Wild Britain on November 5th 2o23. OUWG Chair Helen Edwards created a micro pond with school children and spoke to presenter Ellie Harrison about the importance of garden ponds and freshwater, while bird surveyor Nick Boyd spoke about the importance of the site for birds and butterflies and made bird feeders with volunteers.
Join us to get involved with our work and events and volunteer at one of our regular Thursday morning work parties, email for details info@ouwg.org.uk #natureconservation #wildlife #wildbritain #countryfile #getinvolved
Visit Oxford Mail for the full article
Janet Keene 25th September 2023
It is with great sadness that we share with you the recent news of the passing away of Dr Janet Keene, OUWG founder member and lifelong wildlife enthusiast. Janet was an inspirational key figure in the early days of urban wildlife conservation in the city.
You can read more here.
Read our past newsletter issues:
Newsletters 2024
Spring 2024 Newsletter
Newsletters 2023
October 2023 Autumn Newsletter
March 2023 Late Spring Newsletter
Newsletters 2022
28th October 2022 Autumn/Winter Newsletter 2022
13th April 2022 Late Spring Newsletter 2022
2nd Feb 2022 Late Winter/ Early Spring Newsletter 2022
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