Tag: wildlife garden

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Community Spruce – achievements

Thank you to all members who have contributed to our Community Spruce initiative over the past year. Here’s what we’ve achieved together:

  • Tidied the site, removing two skip loads of rubbish.
  • Refurbished the toilets,  including replacing the broken toilet seat in the ladies loo, painting the walls and doors and putting new lino down.
  • Clive’s kitchen has been cleaned and a new fridge, kettle and microwave installed for members’ use.
  • The communal polytunnel has been cleared and cleaned ready for growing plants for open day.
  • The bonfire area has been cleared and new compost bins made.
  • The grass has been cut throughout the year.
  • The hedging has been pruned and overgrown areas cut back.
  • The office has been cleared.
  • We’ve planted new wildflower verges and hedging around our perimeter and planted wildflower seeds in the wildlife garden. This work is part of our re-wilding initiative, which will increase the biodiversity on our site and help support our fellow plant and animal communities which are now seriously threatened by climate change and loss of habitat.

We have been helped by teams of corporate volunteers, a great new initiative  set up by Linda, which brings donations to the site and gets work done quickly.  The 19th Bromley Scout Group also helped plant new hedging and seed bombed the wildlife garden.

There will be more opportunities to join in Community Spruce activities in 2020 as we continue to work to make our allotment site a peaceful, wildlife haven and an important community asset.

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Wildlife on site

In July we put up a whiteboard for members and visitors to the site to record the wildlife they have seen.  So far sightings include:

  • cinebar moth catepillers
  • peacock butterfly catepillers
  • grasshopper
  • newt in the wildlife garden pond
  • tadpole in a pond
  • fish in the river
  • slow worm
  • large copper butterfly
  • jersey tiger moth

The whiteboard is outside the Clubhouse – if you see anything please note it down.  If you take a photograph email it to thecommittee@dorsetroadallotments.org.uk and we will add it to the website!

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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.