Summer 2026 - Newsletter No. 11

Friends of Kinsbourne Green Common

Jul 9

4 min read

Welcome to the summer newsletter for the Friends of Kinsbourne Green Common.

We love keeping in touch with everyone using this newsletter, but sometimes there

are things that happen that we need to tell you about more quickly. And we’re always

aiming to do better if we can. We have a Facebook page called ‘Friends of

Kinsbourne Green Common’ where we let you know time critical things such as

when we’re cutting down trees, or doing the annual hay cut. We’d love it you were

able to follow us there to hear about events as they happen and plan your walks

accordingly.

Volunteer Opportunities

We’re also keen to set up some more community volunteer groups. Over the past couple of years, a number of you have kindly offered your help, and other than litter picking, not too much has needed our attention. However, we’re delighted to announce that a funding bid has been successful, and we’ve been awarded a grant of £5,500 from BLCF under the London Luton Airport Greener Future Fund programme to undertake a number of projects:

Improving the access points onto the common – as you will know, they get very muddy in winter, and we hope to improve this by laying some ground stabilisation mesh and hardcore;
Flailing of the hedges to improve their structure making them more suitable for birds to nest. It will also curtail a gradual encroachment of the marginal shrubs into the acidic grassland area;
Areas of planting to encourage an increase in the amount of rare acidic grassland;
Installation of bird and owl boxes;
Improved signage for users of the common.

We think we need three groups of volunteers to help with:

Planting and general species management;
Bird and insect surveys;
Hard landscaping activities.

We don’t anticipate the number of hours for volunteers to be very high, but if you have an interest in any or all of these activities, please could you email

trustees@kinsbournegreencommon.org.uk and put the word ‘VOLUNTEER’ in the

title so we can readily identify your kind offer of help.

Summer Season

Turning to seasonal matters. You will hopefully have noticed that the skylarks are back and seen the signs in the grassland asking humans and dogs to keep off an area of grass in the middle of the common. This is to try and keep a quieter area to encourage skylarks to nest. Thanks so much for helping us with this. Skylarks are RSPB red listed birds, as their numbers have declined significantly over the past 50 years.

Big Butterfly Count 17 July to 9 August

– according to the group the Butterfly Conservation we are in a butterfly emergency as the numbers and species decline. Butterflies are important as pollinators and are also part of the food chain. The Big Butterfly Count is a UK wide survey, and you can help assess the health of our environment simply by counting butterflies. How about you take part this year in the Big Butterfly Count?

You can do it in your garden at home, the local park or you can also do it walking

around the common. It takes just 15 minutes. To take part go to

https://bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org and download an app and ID chart where you get help identifying and recording the butterflies that you see.

You can also identify and record the butterflies that you see at other times of the year using the iRecord Butterflies app on your phones. It can work out where you are, and from that suggest the butterflies you’re most likely to see, making identification so much easier.

All you need to do is walk around the common, and record what you see. The more we do it, the better the records we make, so we can hopefully see progress in the diversity of the species as the years go by. We would love to buck national trends of declining numbers of butterfly species.

Annual Maintenance

And finally to annual maintenance matters. As you may know, the common grassland is cut and baled just once a year by a local farmer. This is important to keep the grass controlled and allow wildflowers to thrive. This year we’re hoping to do something a little different to help support our aims to make the common more biodiverse. Our plan is to leave a ‘green corridor’ of uncut grass that will connect two sides of the common, creating cover for small animals and insects to traverse the grassland more safely. It may also encourage different species of flowers too. The location of the corridor will change from year to year – and we’ll see what this brings in terms of the variety of plants that we see.

We’re hoping that the harebells are back again this summer too. Last summer we

had lots, more than we’ve seen in previous years. Here’s a photo from last year so

you’ll know them if you see them.