August 2024 – Bridle Road Green Refurb

First day ever doing this, definately feels very weird to just go out and fix up a public space. Nobody else does this right?

Who cares, lets go get it done…

Spent ages trying to make sure I have everything I could possibly ever need, and more. Because the weather is great, I’ll also need plenty to drink too, and an early start. My tools I have with me are commercial quality, basic home gardening tools, plus my new Dewalt 36v Cordless Mower and my DeWalt Strimmer

I started with:

• Garden Rake
• Roamwild Multi-Digger Garden Edger
• Wolf Garten Brooms and Gorilla Tubs
• Dewalt 36v Cordless Mower and 2 sets of batteries.

So, not much kit to work with, but we have to make a start and figure the rest out as we go. My wife had agreed to come and get my first set of battieries as soon as I’d finished with them to take them home and charge them then bring them back, so I could have 3 rounds of mowing too. Luckily, this wasn’t needed though.

I managed to mow the entire green once, cutting it down to a tidy length. Next, I mowed the footpath edge down lower to a very short tidy length before running out of juice.

The Edges:

Next up was the edges. This all had to be done by hand with the Roamwild Garden Edger. This was hard work and slow going, as I had no idea where the edges were.

Cut it and see was the only way this was going to work.

Scraping the lawn off the footpath from underneath was hard! Because the grass had bonded to the pavement.

Day one ended at 7:30pm, having cut half of the edges on one side, and mowed the green one and a half times. Shower and dinner are calling. This is really hard work.

Nerd Stats: 13 Bags of rubbish // 29,000 Steps // 23km Walked

Saturday 10th August

After last weekend’s start, I was determined to make a much bigger impact this weekend.

I now have four sets of batteries for my mower. I’m going to mow like somebody’s life depends on it!

The weather has been fantastic all weekend. It has been dry and really warm, making it such a nice weekend to be outside gardening.

Saturday was spent finishing the footpath edging (200ft long) with just my blade shovel. Scraping the grass up off the footpath and cutting it free from the rest of the green was seriously slow work.

So much grass was bagged up just from the edging. Really heavy too and sadly, heavily contaminated with broken glass, plastic and shreds of tin cans.

This is why you cannot and should never throw the cuttings from an unfamiliar lawn back onto the lawn!

Sunday 11th August

This was again another full mow over, followed by just over 5 hours of raking the green with my lawn rake.

Mowing could never remove the extreme amount of waste, dead grass and rubbish in this green. I hadn’t intended to rake it all, but once I started and saw how much was coming out, I just had to keep going.

As you can see from the photos, I ended up with a huge pile of mouldy old dead grass and even more all over the place.

This went on until past 8pm when it was time to go home. However, all the raking had left the grass looking scruffy, like a bad haircut.

It still had a ton of dead material to remove and now looked like a bad haircut. A new plan was needed. Dinner and a Shower was needed. I’ll regroup again next weekend.

Thanks to Siobhan for the huge rubbish bags, too; I ran out of bags…

Nerd Stats: 33 Bags of rubbish // 54,500 Steps // 44km Walked

Stepping up our game today with some new additions to the toolbox. This Overgrown Lawn Cleanup just got so much better!

After last weekend’s backbreaking efforts, I’ve invested in a Ryobi Cordless Scarifier, which allows me to use my existing Dewalt batteries.

I’ve also invested in a Ryobi Cordless Lawn Edger because cutting lawn edges by hand is not practical at all.

I started with a quick tidy-up mow to cut it back to a number 2 and make it short enough for the scarifier to work it’s magic.

Scarifying with the Ryobi Cordless Scarifier

Then, it’s time to switch to the scarifier and go at it. The Ryobi Cordless Scarifier did not disappoint. Endless bags of debris just kept on coming.

I kinda gave up after many hours going in every direction as I’d pulled out another 13 bags of debris from the green. On top of that, I could see there was still more to come out, but the soil was now visible and should recover properly.

It now looks at it’s worst, which is a good thing as I’ve removed 71 bags of rubbish in this overgrown lawn cleanup. This means the recover of this lawn should be fantastic over the next eight to twelve weeks.

I did do a tiny bit of edge cutting with the edger, but it needs time to grow out and the soil to settle again. This must now be left alone for at least four to six weeks.

Nerd Stats: 13 Bags of rubbish // 23,000 Steps // 17km Walked

Filming Day!

Things were so much worse than I’d ever expected, yet every green space in Croydon is like this, so it was clear that it was time to break out the GoPro and film these cleanups for all to see.

I’ve put a lot of money and time into this, so if I can generate a few quid from it in five years, then great. Google can put some money back into our community.

Edge Renewals

After cutting the really long 200ft of the short edge on this green with nothing more than my Edging Blade / Shovel, I today I’m back for day 5 and cut all 230 feet of the roadside edge.

I brought with me my newly purchased Ryobi 18v Cordless Edger and it did not let me down.

In many places, the roadside lawn edge was three inches thick or more. I also had to recut the messy edges I had done by hand along the straight footpath edge.

Once it was all cut, it had to be scraped free from the kerbstones. For this, I used my new Wolf Garten Dutch Hoe on the wooden handle. This worked perfectly, but again, it was slow progress.

Nerd Stats: 12 Bags of rubbish // 27,500 Steps // 22km Walked

People have asked me quite a few times now how I get rid of the rubbish… Because I’m registered with Croydon Council as a “Street Champion” (Volunteer cleaner upper), they provide me with all the bags and gloves and will take away all the rubbish.