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| Fenton House, Hampstead at sunset on Sunday |
We had our second Grey to Green meeting at
Small and Beautiful restaurant on Saturday 19 March.
Rather than continue to have meetings we
decided that it would be better to just get on with organizing the making of
tree pits for the wildflower gardens and letting our neighbours see how we are
getting on.
People agreed ChattertonRoadGreytoGreen was OK for the name for our street
greening group.
An important idea was put forward by the
children Ala and James, that Play Street
would be good for children in our road
(apparently we have quite a few small children now). Across London instead of
applying for planning permission to have a street closed to road traffic (as
for a street party or an event), various London Councils, including Islington,
will allow a street to be closed for a few hours once in a while. This gives
children a chance to safely play on scooters and bikes in the road, and it gives
the adults a chance to chat and meet each other in the front gardens and the
road, a novel experience in a London usually taken over by cars and vans
desperate to get from A to B. Phil and
Jen’s children will let us know what they find out about Play Street.
It was suggested that if we did have a
street closure we might put that with an event to raise money to pay for
continued greening in our road, when the government funding stops (Islington
says they will give us a little money for plants, as well as advice).
The Council will arrange to take away the
hard surface we need to remove (around some of the trees) so that we can
replace that with soil for flowers (it is VERY heavy and dusty !).
It was suggested that we use a timescale of
three months to tidy up tree bases and six months to achieve larger planters
(maybe the gro-bags we talked about in earlier meetings).
The
resources we’ll need to get started include :-
v Wood or plastic to keep
the soil in place around tree pits
v Soil for planting
v
Seeds or plants to put in around the trees we make a pit for.
We HAVE made a tree pit around the tree in
front of 1A and in front of 31, complete with edging, soil and plants. All
those need now is watering every day for a while.
The idea that we can work together to
beautify our street is a powerful one. If we are successful it is hoped this
will result in greater inclusiveness and that it will change how we view our
street.
We know that not everyone is in favour of
the wildflower gardens and we also know that some
people just don’t have the
time to be involved. It is for everyone’s benefit, however, that we try and
make our street more beautiful.
Kathleen is going to contact the Council
about the idea of a cycle shed to keep our tools and materials in.
So far we have contacted the following
organisations for help and advice :-
·
Islington Council - We are promised a
small amount of funding and the Parks
and Open Spaces Manager Mr Andrew Bedford has indeed given a range of
practical help, with promise of more contacts and more help to follow. Useful
links for this part of the Council are http://www.islington.gov.uk/services/parks-environment/parks/manage_greenspaces/Pages/default.aspx and http://www.islington.gov.uk/publicrecords/library/Environmental-protection/Information/Advice-and-information/2011-2012/(2011-05-13)-Parks-and-urban-greenspace.pdf
·
Royal Horticultural Society, RHS Wisley
– They cannot donate but have offered us to become one of their community
groups involved in ‘Britain in Bloom’ campaign
at https://www.rhs.org.uk/communities and the ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood ‘scheme (at the same link above). Also
exciting is the opportunity to affiliate and then we could have a group outing
once a year (55 people max.) to any of their wonderful gardens. They end by
saying they do have a few seed packets and so I shall give them my address and
we’ll have a bit more for our tree pits. They have also given us a link at https://www.rhs.org.uk/communities/Get-Involved-Search-Results?Postcode=london&Distance=25&groupType= where we can search for other community
groups working near where we are.
·
The Gardening Club – a link at http://www.thegardeningclub.co.uk is a members-only group where we can buy
cheap good-quality plants. It is in Enfield near Crews Hill. They’ve not
offered us any donations, but I did speak to their plant expert Joe, who gave
me a twenty minute interview and we chatted about the right type of plants to
think about using. We can e-mail him and he will help us in the future.
·
Gillespie Ecology park – Our local
nature park at http://www.friendsofgillespiepark.co.uk
and http://www.islington.gov.uk/services/parks-environment/parks/islington_nature_reserves/gillespie/Pages/default.aspx . They said they’d put our request for
donations and help on their agenda and get back to us.
·
Kew Gardens – have asked for an address
so they can send us some of their ‘Grow
Wild’ seed boxes, link to find out about these at https://www.growwilduk.com/seed-kit. They’ve also given us links at
the
Grow Wild website that has extensive guides to community project growing https://www.growwilduk.com/
as well as suggesting we might like to contact
Garden Organic’s North London Master Gardeners. They may have volunteer mentors
in our area http://northlondon.mastergardeners.org.uk/
·
Royal parks – link at https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks
It is Regents Park that has got back to
me. Their administrative officer has asked their allotments people to check
whether they have any spare seeds or other items they can donate. I shall get
back and ask whether they’ve found anything.
·
Islington Gardeners – Andrew Bedford at
Islington Council gave me an e-mail for Paul Thompson at this group. They’ve
got a link for Arlington Square at http://www.arlingtonassociation.org.uk/
which is where they
do most of their community gardening work. Paul came to see our street last
week and he was quite enthusiastic about our possibilities. Paul suggested that Ockendon Road is a
successful area where tree pits have brightened up their street. Paul says his
group do have seeds to spare and so I’ll be getting back and asking if we may
have some. Paul has invited us to their Spring event at https://islingtongardeners.org.uk
which will be a talk from speakers with six different community gardens, on
Tuesday 22 March, details at https://islingtongardeners.org.uk/events/ They’ll be having a plant sale in April, and
that might be fun.
·
Capel Manor College - link at
http://www.capel.ac.uk and
http://www.capelmanorgardens.co.uk is primarily a learning college for
horticulture and farm work including animals. They’ve also got gardens to visit
and it’s altogether a very busy place.
Two of us are going to meet their Head of Horticulture and Landscaping
Sarah in a couple of weeks. She is VERY enthusiastic about ‘greening’ the
‘grey’ and ‘brown’ spaces in urban areas; I’ve said we want to find out about
the range of plants that can survive well in poor soil, lightly watered, and sometimes
trampled, in a public space.
ANY SPECIFIC QUESTIONS YOU
MIGHT HAVE FOR SARAH, WRITE THEM DOWN AND PUT THEM THROUGH MY DOOR (next to
Pizzadelique, before say 06 April).
I’ve asked for
people’s e-mail and telephone number details, for the dozen or so residents who
want to help get our street greening underway. I intend to write everyone’s
details on a sheet and distribute this to all those who’ve been coming to
meeting, if that’s OK.
In conclusion,
so far we have achieved the following :-
Ø
Two brand-new tree pits complete with plants and blooms
Ø
Another new tree pit by next weekend is promised
Ø
Several more tree pits are ready to be made
Ø
Promise of money from the Council
Ø
Quite a few links to other groups doing Greening in our area
Ø
Links to helpful organisations
Ø
A sense of purpose amongst those involved
Ø
The start of street beautification is underway
Everyone so
far involved welcomes you to come along and get involved. It’s not a full-time
or a permanent job, we do what we can when we can spare the time.
Initial
contact is through Franc at 1A, or through any of your neighbours who are
involved. It’s very informal and we are getting exercise, networking and having
a great time.
So far Franc
has a file with correspondence and contacts, and you’re welcome to have a look
through it. We don’t know what the
future holds but we are pretty enthusiastic about greening our street.
I, Franc, am
maintaining a blog at http://chattertonroadgreytogreen.blogspot.co.uk
which is where these minutes can be found (it’s too expensive to keep printing
lots of pages so everyone has a copy through their door. If you want a
printed-out copy please ask Franc at 1A.) Alternatively
we could add you to an e-mail list, and you’d get a digital copy when we have a
new blog post about our road. Write your e-mail details and put it through
Franc’s door at 1A, please.
We are dropping a
single-sheet leaflet through your door this week. It will give the highlights
of our project so far, and lists our next steps.
We MAY have another meeting,
if people feel we need to.
Cheers, Franc
& Annette, Flis and Matt, Kathleen, Jeremy, Jen and Phil and Ala and James,
and Karl, and a few more who’ve expressed an interest including Cassie, Jodie,
Sandy, Tom and Sarah.
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