"To the Constant Gardeners may I express my grateful thanks...."
We set out this year to continue to improve our gardens and woodlands and despite the low turnout of support we achieved most of our objectives for 2019. To the Constant Gardeners may I express my grateful thanks for the hard work they have made in re-planting,weeding, pruning, sweeping and tidying. Our planters on the Lansdown junction have been a glorious entry to the community once again and thanks to the Chalmers for their work on these. The two cannas we were given in 2018 for the planters were propagated into a dozen new plants now spread around the gardens and their orange flowers are a joy.
We celebrated getting on for 15 years work on the gardens and woodlands this year with the BIG GREEN DAY and nearly 200 people attended with 30 or so local community groups - it was a great success and Di Morgan and Christian Duckworth, with a little help from yours truly, put in over 6 months of planning to launch this day - the weather was perfect, the fantastic support given by our friends in the provision of fantastic cakes and drinks, raising raffle prizes made what wasn't intended to be a fund-raiser one that put some £800 into church funds. This one off celebration welcomed groups from all over Bath to promote a wide range of community activities in our gardens and woods.
Click on the link below for photos and text on the BIG GREEN DAY.
A "Silver" Award and An "Outstanding" Award!
The efforts of the small team and its cake and coffee supporters were rewarded with a SILVER in Bath in Bloom collected by Di and Phil Morgan and we have just been advised that we gained OUTSTANDING in South West in Bloom.
"Spring 2020 will welcome ...."
One of our objectives for this year was clearing the Dell and this wasn't achieved due to lack of numbers so remains on the objectives list for 2020. We suffered our usual level of vandalism and littering - it is hard to fathom the minds of these people who deliberately commit such acts. We also had to have tree work on the oak over the bus shelter as limbs were dangerous and were removed.
Thanks to a £100 donation from the WI we planted 4 white trailing roses and 500 bluebells, and we were given a further £100 by Bath in Bloom and will be planting a further 500 bluebells and two more roses in October - Spring 2020 will therefore welcome 1100 bluebells, 1700 daffodils and a few hyancinths which have been planted over the past years.
"A Wild Flower Lawn..."
A visit to Highgrove inspired me to try a Wild Flower lawn and we planted this in October together with poppy seeds - this is sited to the left front of the church in front of the fig tree and hopefully will begin to show itself next year and then mature over the coming couple of years or so. Hopefully it will not be trampled upon whilst it settles in!
"We look forward to 2020 ...."
As we set out for 2020 it would be an objective to regain GOLD in Bath in Bloom but to do this we need more support particularly from younger people as there is quite a lot of heavy spading to be done. If you cannot help in this way we welcome money for plants, plants themselves, memorial seating grants and funds for additional garden tools. Money can be dropped off at the office marked for the Garden Funds, plants can be dropped off at our monthly garden working parties (in the church notes).
We look forward to 2020 as another year to progress in making this area a community asset ,and once again my thanks to all who have supported in any way gardening 2019.
Bob Carlton-Porter. October 2019
Posted: 14th October 2019
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