Pevensey Road Green Gym Rangers: Crane Valley Partnership Projects

The Pevensey Road Green Gym Rangers, initially set up as a TCV Green Gym group, have been a self-organised volunteer group since 2018. The group’s weekly sessions now attract around 20 volunteers, some of whom have been involved for over a decade.

Working alongside Hounslow Council’s Countryside Rangers, the group helps care for the Pevensey Road Nature Reserve, an old orchard site comprising of woodlands, ponds and wildflower meadows. The site features many veteran fruit trees, which the group have helped protect by clearing space around them, as well as planting new trees. Each year, they host an apple picking day at the orchard, where the community gathers to harvest the fruit and make fresh apple juice. In addition to this, the group carry out regular litter picks and practical conservation work, and have installed wooden sculptures, benches and signage throughout the reserve to make it a welcoming community space. Their work has been recognised widely, with the new paths having recently been included in the London LOOP walk.

The group’s efforts bring benefits not only to the local community, but also to biodiversity. They have created areas of hibernacula, such as bug hotels, and often remove invasive species such as Himalayan Balsam. During my visit to the group in 2024, I bumped into a local butterfly expert who mentioned that the work the volunteers have been doing in clearing parts of the woodland has been positively impacting certain butterfly species’ populations.

The Pevensey Road Green Gym Rangers applied for two grants of the 2024/25 Crane Valley Community Fund. The first was used to purchase tools and equipment for the volunteers, including loppers, pole saws, gloves, secateurs, litter pickers and personal protective equipment (PPE). The volunteers shared that the new equipment has been very valuable in enabling more people to take part in practical tasks.

The second grant was used to support work being done on the ephemeral ponds at the nature reserve. Their aim is to improve the habitat in and around the ponds by coppicing trees to allow more sunlight to reach the water, removing overgrown or dominating vegetation, and creating dead hedges around the paths with coppiced willow. The hedges will block off access to the ponds so they remain undisturbed. Additionally, the group plan to make the ponds deeper to increase water retention and enhance the habitat for invertebrates and amphibians by adding stones, shingle and logs. With the Crane Valley Community Fund, they anticipate purchasing more tools to aid this work, such as waders, willow saplings, stones, shingle and wood, and a new First Aid kit. The grant will also fund interpretation boards to be installed around the pond, providing information to the public on the importance of these habitats and the wildlife they support. The main challenge the group faced during this project was the weather: the heavy winter rainfall caused river levels to rise and areas around the ponds to become very muddy. This made the ponds inaccessible or dangerous for the volunteers to work in, delaying some of the planned conservation work.

Head over to Pevensey Road Nature Reserve to see how this work progresses! You can find the Pevensey Road Green Gym Rangers on Facebook, here: Pevensey Road Green Gym Rangers | Facebook. If you would like to take part, the group meet every Monday (excluding Bank Holidays) at 10:45am to 2pm (with a mid-session break for refreshments) by the junction of Hounslow Rd and Pevensey Rd (what3words: https://w3w.co/fields.wisdom.help).