Hi, I am Johnny one of the interns at Tewkesbury Nature Reserve. I started all the way back in April so when I finish at the end of October, I will have been here for seven months. I am the Health and Nature Reserve Ambassador, so my role has mostly revolved around community engagement and getting more people involved with the reserve and engaging with nature, although my role has been really varied, so I have been involved in everything from completing scything training to helping with the Nature Guardians.
One of the main projects I have worked on has been organizing the in-house arts and crafts events over the summer taking part in a wide range of activities including terrarium making, wind chime making, mud painting, leaf printing, landscape painting, sketching, paper mache dragonflies, lantern making, and leaf hammering. I began organizing these events by trying to think of as many different art ideas as I could, then I had a think about how I could connect them to nature, and I thought about how to run each activity for a sensible cost. At first, I was quite nervous about leading the events as it was all new to me and I was not sure if anything was going to go wrong, but I found I really enjoyed hosting each event and they went a lot better than I expected. My favourite events were the terrarium-making session as it is something I have always wanted to try myself, and, Robyn’s landscape painting event, as it was a really relaxing way to spend the day. It was also really enjoyable to see everyone having a go at the mud painting and enjoying playing with the mud.
Across the year but particularly during the summer holidays, I have spent a lot of time helping with the Nature Guardians forest school sessions. While I will be happy to never have to put up the toilet tent again, I will really miss these sessions. I have learned a lot more about bugs and beetles from all the bug hunting that the Nature Guardians seem to love, I even got to see an Elephant moth caterpillar for the first time during one of these sessions which was really amazing, and I am still shocked that it came from this country as it was so big. My favorite activities that we have done so far have been making clay blob monsters and safely lighting a fire to roast marshmallows over. During these sessions I have also definitely learned lots of new skills, as at first, helping with the Nature Guardians every day over summer was a big change and was very tiring, however, over time I have gotten much more used to working with children, and I have really enjoyed these sessions.
Another of the main projects I have been working on has been running Wildlife Walks at Tewkesbury Nature Reserve. I have covered a lot of themes during these walks, but my favorite was my foraging walk as it is something I find really interesting. A big challenge has been getting more people involved as numbers have fluctuated a lot across the walks, so I have been busy making social media posts, making posters, and trying to think how best to engage with people. When we held our bat walk I was shocked by the number of people who had come along, but it was amazing to see how had turned out and how many people brought along their bat lanterns to the walk (which we had made earlier that day with the library) and although they took their time coming out, the bat walk was full of bats by the end of the night.
I have also been trying to get people to use the reserve’s community orchard more, as it is a great resource however unfortunately when I first started it was a bit overgrown and underused. This week I led a volunteer day in the orchard, so it is currently well maintained and cut back, and I hope that any interest in the orchard carries on after I leave. One of the things I have been able to do in the orchard was to plant a herb bed, although this has been down to the kind donations of plants, from volunteers, which made a really big difference.
The two things that have made my time so enjoyable at Tewkesbury Nature Reserve have been being able to spend so much time outside in a beautiful and wildlife-rich setting, and the fact that everyone I have worked with has been so supportive and friendly, so while I am excited to start a new job, I will really miss my time being here. One project which I hoped to start was decorating a bridge on the northern side of the reserve with a wildlife mural on top, although as these things go, I did not have enough time for this. However, as the process has been started, I will be looking forward to returning to see how it has been decorated once the mural is painted!
