Tag: community

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Open Day pictures

Our favourite event of the year is our Open  Day when we welcome the local community to join us for a day of food, music and entertainment as well as an opportunity to enjoy our allotment site.   Our Open day on Sunday 19th May was no exception.

We would like to say huge ‘Thank You’ to everybody who made the day so special, either by visiting, preparing the site in advance, helping with a stall, cooking or serving food, performing or helping to pack away at the end.

Below are a selection of pictures showing some of the highlights of the day.

The Wildlife Garden

This is our new bug hotel which we are building with the community.  We invited visitors to the wildlife garden to fill the stacked pallets with material to provide nooks and crannies for bugs to live. We will put a roof on it to make sure it provides a waterproof home for a wide range of bugs.

 

 

 

People enjoyed watching the pond as well as pond dipping. The pond is teaming with life – we found several newts (including the one shown below), a dragonfly larvae (below), tiny red bloodworms, two types of snails, caddisfly larvae and a host of other invetebrates.

 

 

 

Stalls

Our plant stall was back selling vegetable and flowers plants as well as rhubarb.  We also had a bee demonstration stall that sold products from beekeeping as well as bee jewellery.  The Soap and Dandelion coffee making stalls was also very popular.

 

 

 

 

Performances

 

 

 

 

 

We’d like to say a special thank you to Beckenham Choir (above) and Churchfields Choir (below) who performed at the Open Day.

Children’s activities

We had a range of activities for our younger visitors including bubbles to chase, a magic show, cake decorating, hook a duck, bouncy castle, no tears tombola, the Woodcraft Folk did craft activities, as well as pond dipping and helping with the bug hotel.

Clubhouse Cafe & BBQ

As well as enjoying the homemade cakes  there was an exhibition by the Beckenham Photographic Society that included photographs taken on site, such as the amazing sequence showing a dragonfly emerging. Here’s photographs Carol Dowd exhibited.

 

We also had two BBQs on the go for the day with our fabulous chefs cooking hundreds of burgers and sausages.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you to everybody who contributed to the day – it was a real team effort and a lovely community day.

 

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Community Spruce – Spring Clean

On Sunday 14 March our members cleaned, tidied and decorated the communal facilities as part of our Community Spruce programme.

The external walls of the toilets were painted (the doors still need to be finished).

The internal walls and ceilings the both toilets were scraped, primed and painted (the floors still need to be painted).

The Clubhouse kitchen cupboards were emptied and the contents sorted.   A professional cleaning company will be along shortly to give the Clubhouse a deep clean ready for upcoming events including our AGM and Open Day.

The communal poly tunnel and greenhouse were cleared and tidied.  Unfortunately a lot of potted plants had to be disposed of because they were infested with vine weevil.

A skip was available for site and members’ use as some plotholders had inherited a lot of rubbish and rubble when taking on their plots.

There was also a litter pick of the site and surroundings.

Thank you to everybody who helped out on the day and to those who have been helping with the site improvements at other times.

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Seedy Sunday – 24th March 2019

When we were consulting on what people wanted to see at Dorset Road Allotments,  members frequently asked for opportunities to come together as a community to do something to benefit the site as well as get to know each other.  Our first community day was in February when we planted new hedging and seed bombed the wildlife garden.  Seedy Sunday on 24th March is our second community day.

Come along to the Clubhouse to swap any spare seeds or plants with your fellow plotholders, help sow seeds to sell at the open day and learn from experts.  You can also have a cup of tea or coffee with your fellow allotmenteers.

The shop will also be open so that  you can stock up on any gardening equipment or buy some seeds at a discounted price.

We look forward to seeing you on the 24th March.