by Tim.

Thursday 8th August, 2013 : This was an unusual one kicked off by a strange request to our Contact Us page:

Interests : Help!

Further Details: We are a small nature reserve in Stoke Bishop, which has a wild life lake. Someone has thrown in waterlilies, which are not compatible with a wildlife pond. We were hoping that your club might be able to help us remove them. The water is about six/seven feet deep where they are, so a bit too deep without equipment. Unfortunately we cannot use weedkillers as these tend to kill off fish etc.

We hope that one of your members may be able to help us.
Many thanks
Carole, Old Sneed Park Nature Reserve

Aerodivers to the Rescue! Tim mobilized forces and came up with a plan:

Having done a bit of research my suggested approach would be to remove the bulk of the root system and then lay some weed control fabric  membrane over the area, weighted to prevent the inevitable roots that will remain from recovering. The fabric can either be left to rot or removed at a later date.

Joined by Rob & Pete they got the job done!

‘It was something different and though it was zero vis and very smelly, I have to admit I enjoyed myself immensely. I’m proud of how we all just got on with the task and with daylight to spare had it all wrapped up by about 8:00pm’ – Tim

From Carole: They were a super bunch who went into that really smelly water and retrieved the lily rhizomes in zero visibility.

Hopefully these have all gone now. The rhizomes were huge, which shows they weren’t named varieties, which would probably been smaller.

So a wonderful job done. What a way to spend a Wednesday evening!