Category: Lewisham Parks

January began in a very wet fashion, with lots of heavy rain and the rivers in flood mode. Our first session back was at Cornmill Gardens where we working on the viewing platform both checking the wooden slats and removing a line of vegetation so in a month’s time when the plants get growing you’ll still be able to see the river! The volunteers also cleared up litter and various bits of rubbish that had floated downstream in the recent rains, which Glendale’s cleansing team collected at the end of the session.

Later in the month we were back on the weir in Ladywell Fields, allowing the river to permeate through the weir and unblocking the secondary channel was our key aim and after 3 hours of shifting vegetation, rubbish, fence panels, and a e-bike we left the weir with a good flow, and a cohort of moorhens who appeared as we left.

It doesn’t feel too long since I wrote a post about the end of 2024, but 2025 has been a really busy and varied year for our Rivers & People volunteers. Firstly, I want to extend a HUGE thank you to everyone who helped out at one of our 36 sessions this year. We covered all three rivers within Lewisham, and miles of banksides, surveying for wildlife, litter-picking, restoration projects within the channel to improving access to the river from within the parks. Overall, 693 volunteer hours have been given to the rivers in Lewisham, so thank you to everyone who has been involved.

To join the Rivers & People volunteer group in 2026, please check out our January-March session programme.

We had slightly less sessions in May due to some staff annual leave, but the sessions we had were full on! From clearing the weir in Ladywell Fields, and getting that water flowing through all the rocks to heading back to the willow lined Quaggy in Chinbrook Meadows. In this latter location we manage the veegtation that grows into and through the boardwalk to keep it accessible for everyone to walk through the ponds and over the river here on the pathways.

Above the Ravensbourne on the bridge to St Mary’s Churchyard and gardens we met a familiar avian face; a pair of mandarin ducks who have called this stretch of river home for the past three years. We know its the same female mandarin as she has a twisted lower bill, so she stands out, we also imagine she gets a lot of food from park visitors as she has certain grown in confidence as she was the first bird to fly up and ask for crumbs (swiftly followed by the male, pictured above, then some feral pigeons)!

We’ve been all over the borough this April! Starting out at Cornmill gardens, located behind Lewisham Town Centre, we did a litter pick upstream towards Riverdale Sculpture trail. We removed a whopping 9 full bags of rubbish and a large shopping trolley from this section of the river. We also observed a large shoal of Chub and spotted one small European Eel slightly upstream of this park.

Lots of work has been happening in the east side of Beckenham Place Park, so it’s been a while since we’ve waded this section. We found some interesting things in the river including a collection of little plastic fish floating downstream towards, they were a bit brighter coloured than the fish we normally find!

Heading into the Quaggy later in the month, heading downstream from Manor Park to behind the Lidl on Lee High Street. Although still early in the growing season we did find a bunch of Himalayan Balsam, which we removed on our wade downstream.

March means Amphibians! As the amphibian migration begins, we start to check all the ponds within Lewisham for signs of amphibian presence. This year we visited Bell Green Pond, in Linear Park and Chinbrook Community Orchard. We change our session time from 11am-2pm to evening sessions 4.30pm-7pm to catch dusk into darkness where we can practice many different amphibian survey techniques.

If you’ve been reading the blog over the past year, you may remember we’ve been working on the hub area of Ladywell Fields (South), previously digging up the brambles and reducing nettles etc in 2 of the 4 areas. In March we returned to plant up marginal plants at the bottom next to the river and a wildflower mix of plug plants and seeds for the rest of the slope.

We donned our waders and started our quarterly clean up of the River Ravensbourne working from Ladywell Road up to Lewisham Hospital and then around the secondary channel.

Lots happening in February! We spent most of this month’s sessions in Northbrook Park, near Grove Park station, working both within the park’s new wetland area and just across the boundary on Network Rail’s land to improve the wet woodland and the park’s stream of water that flows into it. The image below shows the channel from the second pond in the stream being widened and graded to allow the flowing water to spread out into the woodland (where the photo was taken).

On the park’s side of the fence we have been processing the limbs and branches of a few trees that have come down in recent high winds and working with local schools to help plant up the pond and the banks.

We then ventured further south into the borough to Chinbrook Meadows, where we have to keep on top of teh growth of the willows along the stretch of river (and overhanging the paths and boardwalks). In addition to dead hedges, woven fences we’ve also created some hexagonal and pentagonal dead wood piles to allow the sneadings to be kept on site in a neat but still great for wildlife purpose! These worked really well, so look out for them in other parks across the borough soon.

January began as a frosty month, where we finished up our work on a section of reeds in the Hare & Billet pond, Blackheath. We’ll return next winter to tackle the next area of reeds, as we cut areas back on rotation

Elsewhere in the borough, we were planting native black poplar trees along the River Pool, we planted 5 trees, 3 male and 2 female along the stretch of the river and installed protective cages around them to give them time to grow large enough without any disturbance.

DID YOU KNOW? Only around 7,000 wild black poplars now grow in Britain and of these, only 600 are female trees.

December was a busy month, considering that we only had a few sessions due to the festive break. We began our winter management of the Hare & Billet pond up on Blackheath. This is a task we do annually to keep the reeds and flag iris contained in one area of the pond (otherwise they’d spread across the whole pond).

Later in the month we had some new bird boxes to put up in Northbrook Park, where there has been a big project to turn one corner of the park into a wetland, linking up the wet woodland and large pond in the adjacent Network Rail Land.

We finished our year with a walk around Beckenham Place Park, looking at all the work and different projects that have been occurring there over the past year. From me personally I’d like to say a HUGE thanks to all the wonderful volunteers that help to continue improve our wonderful green and blue spaces in Lewisham!

Bramble Bashing! We started our month off in Brookmill Park, where we rotationally remove bramble from two of the path bends. This is a once a year task and we only clear one area at a time to allow for winter foraging and shelter for wildlife that remain local in the winter months.

One of those animals that use the vegetation as cover is the wonderful common frog, like the one pictured below. Also pictured is the river with a lovely shadow of the bare trees.

November also marked leaving Lewisham’s rivers to dip our waders in one of the boroughs many wildlife ponds. This year we got into Hare & Billet pond to remove some of the reed growth, we try to maintain an area of the pond as a reedbed, but have to keep on top of the reeds before they expand into the deeper areas of the pond where we cannot reach. We’ll be back in the pond in January to finish up the last bits!

We started off in October continuing with our hub project in Ladywell Fields (South Field), where we continued with teh ground preparation for our future planting on the banks. The list of plants has been confirmed, and come spring we’ll be back to get planting!

Our group then spent the rest of October in Chinbrook Meadows, swapping bramble bashing for willow coppicing. Each year we coppice another selection of willows alongside the river and wildlife ponds- we do quite drastic work at the far wildlife pond to enable enough light to hit that pond. Fun fact with that pond is that it is the only pond in the meadows that isn’t regularly fed by river water, it’s actually mainly filled with run-off from the football pitches on the other side of the footpath. The exception to this is when the Quaggy is in flood state, where it bursts it’s banks and then runs into the pond.

To add to spooky season, look at this creepy doll found face down in some nettles next to the river!