Hackbridge Church Bioblitz

Small Elephant Hawk Moth (caught at Beddington last night)

Rose Plume (caught at Bedddington last night)

Fairy-ring Champignon at the church

Viper's- bugloss strung at the church by I-spot (Hyssop- thanks Marianne)

We made a start on a local community wildlife gardening project at Hackbridge church today by doing a base line bioblitz study. The project involves the local schools, the Church, the local authority Biodiversity team, the Neighbourhood development group, Hackbridge residents and other local groups such as Sutton in Transition and the Beddington Farmlands Bird Group.

This base line study will give us an inventory of the existing biodiversity before we start gardening. The project hopes to include planting, creating a pond, wildflower meadow generation, installation of bat and bird boxes and putting up feeders. As the project develops we intend to monitor the increasing biodiversity.

We recorded nearly 70 species in the church grounds and I brought a few moths along from Beddington Farmlands to display the kind of biodiversity that we hope to attract in the future. We hope to double the number of species at the church.
The church project is part of a wider objective to create wildlife corridors between Beddington Farmlands and the River Wandle connecting urban spaces and people to nature and interlinking the green spaces within the Wandle Valley Regional Park to create a regional nature network.