THE meeting opened on a sad note, with the announcement of the death of longstanding member, Mervyn Wring.

He will be much missed by the club.

Our thoughts are with his wife, June and their family.

We welcomed Mike McCrea whose talk 'Biodiversity in Stratford Park' proved interesting and informative.

The Landscape Group, for whom Mike works, won the contract for grounds maintenance in the park in 2007.

While the main remit is to keep the park tidy, attractive and welcoming to visitors whether using the leisure facilities, museum or simply enjoying the view, Mike's own lifelong interest in 'nature', starting with a love of birds at six years old, has influenced the direction taken and attitude to grounds maintenance adopted.

His relationship with Stratford Park began in childhood when it was alive with birds, insects, pond and plant life and so he was horrified, on taking up his new post, when early investigations into the biodiversity of the park showed a sterility and lack of wildlife generally.

This was owing in part to previous style of management (everything neatly manicured) but mainly to predatory squirrels.

With a change of emphasis - allowing grassy banks to naturalise, thinning woodland to allow in light, putting up nest boxes, digging a wildlife pond to complement the lake – things are gradually improving and the park is now home to a range of woodland and garden birds, birds of prey, butterflies and moths.

Mike is keen to raise public awareness to the importance of biodiversity and so organises Bird and Bat walks, pond dipping and activities to interest all age groups.

The park, we heard, is the starting point for the judges of Heart of Britain in Bloom.

They consider all aspects of the park and Mike was pleased to tell us that the scores for Stratford Park were high last year.

As a result of the hard work and enthusiasm of Mike and his team, the council commissioned a Biodiversity report, in 2011, which is now the basis of future work.

So much has been achieved and we hope the work will continue.

We thoroughly enjoyed the talk from a man dedicated to a job he clearly loves.

The next meeting of Hilltop Gardening club is in October but before that there is a day trip for which we have some spare seats:

Tuesday, September 9, 2014, visit to RHS Wisley details from Janet Martin 01453 884466.