The Big Day - Love Parks Week

The Friends of Cuthill Park are celebrating Love Parks Week with The Big Day on Sunday 22 July. The event, which brings together The Friends of Hamilton House, Preston Lodge Rugby Club and other community groups, is an opportunity to put forward your views and learn more about planned developments in Prestonpans.

The Big Day takes place upstairs in The Goth, High Street, Prestonpans from 12.30 until 3 p.m.

The Love Parks Week campaign has always been aimed at raising awareness of the importance of parks and green spaces, showcasing the benefits they bring and highlighting the need for continual investment and engagement. This year the campaign will highlight what a healthy (quality) green space looks like and will begin to assess the nation’s parks by encouraging people to give their park a simple health check.

Jan Barker, Friends of Cuthill Park Trustee, said: "In terms of quality, Cuthill Park scores 40% - well below the standard (70%).  However, the Friends, in partnership with East Lothian Council, have already embarked on a programme of improvement which includes the sowing of wildflower areas, planting heritage fruit trees and community bulb planting.  We have exciting future plans for the park and would love to have more volunteers - and hear more ideas."

(You can read the Prestonpans Cluster Assessment for East Lothian Council's Open Space Strategy here)

Paul Bramhill, CEO of charity GreenSpace, highlights the importance of the campaign: “As the benefits of parks have become more recognised, unfortunately the future of green space management is at risk. Local authority budgets are being dramatically reduced and we cannot expect community groups, that already identify they need more funding, training and volunteers, to be the only solution. Parks need to be properly financed to remain healthy – accessible, safe, lush, full of life, welcoming and a hub of the community. I cannot stress enough how important this year’s campaign is, please start to think about the future health of your park.”

The Friends - a Case Study!

Connect with the Woodland Trust:

Give your saplings a helping hand I'm sure, like us, you want your trees to thrive but did you know the saplings you recently planted will be at their most vulnerable during the next five years? Why not give them a helping hand by getting your community together for a 'mulch and munch' day, to include a well-earned summer picnic? As well as providing a tasty treat for animals, young trees compete with grass and weeds for light, nutrients and water. One way that you can give your trees the best start is by weeding around their base. Love it or loathe it, weeding increases your saplings' chances of survival and enhances their growth rate by reducing competition. If you can follow weeding by mulching the exposed base with a thick layer of bark chips, squares of old carpet or straw you'll be helping your saplings become stronger trees for future generations to enjoy. Tree tidbits Did you know that blackthorn supports over 100 species of insects and is the foodplant of caterpillars of the brown and black hairstreak butterfly? It's also the favourite nesting place of nightingales. Although your saplings won't be producing berries just yet have a go at making sloe gin by harvesting sloes from local hedgerows this autumn. Here are two useful downloads: blackthorn factsheet and hedgerow tipples recipe pack. Community stories The Friends of Cuthill Park in Prestonpans, East Lothian wanted to improve the facilities and biodiversity of their park, helping encourage more local people to visit and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. The group originally wanted to create a community garden but had no funding. After hearing about the Woodland Trust's free tree packs in the national press, Jan Barker applied for a Wild Harvest pack. Jan says: "The free trees for communities scheme has brought together a variety of local groups who now help each other out. It introduced me to the Woodland Trust and now my children are proud members of Nature Detectives. Planting trees was the catalyst for so many more activities within our park. We have since gone on to purchase more trees, including heritage variety fruit trees, and create pathways. It has made our local authority take the efforts of the group much more seriously and we are now much more engaged with the council who consult us before carrying out maintenance. We have a wildflower meadow and decorative railings planned for the park. We are now a designated QEII Field in Trust so our park is protected for ever – all because we began planting an edible hedgerow!" Get inspired by this exciting project by clicking on the 'inspiration' tab... And finally... Have your trees been planted as part of a larger woodland project? Has your group considered creating a community woodland? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, please spare 5 minutes to answer our short survey. Don't forget if you know of more space locally that would benefit from trees you can apply now for another pack. Please do share this enewsletter with your friends - they might like some free trees to enhance their community too. Beverley and Julia The Woodland Trust community tree pack team www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/communitytrees

Love Parks Week

Outdoor Joy from GreenSpace on Vimeo.

This fruitful land is your land

Dear all

I have put a petition to the Scottish Parliament - asking for the Scottish  Government to consider allowing people to use underused land for fruitful
food growing. This is before the Scottish Parliament petitions committee on
12th June. The petition is at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_PublicPetitionsCommittee/Petitions/PE1433_Final_Version_22.5.12.pdf

(unfortunately their petition software doesn't work! - so I've had to set up
a separate petition that people can actually sign)

I'm hoping to get 1000 signatures to present on the 12th June - so please do
this now. Please encourage people to sign the e-petition below - and pass it on.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/land-for-landless-scots-for-grow-your-own

All best

John


 John Hancox
 Tel 0778 606 3918

Echinacea - from Pine Ridge to the 'Pans

In 1950, Alfred Vogel travelled to the Americas, studying medicinal herbs used by the native people.  He met Sioux medicine man, Ben Black Elk, from whom he learned about Echinacea purpurea and returned to Teufen, Switzerland, with a small bag of seeds.

Using the seeds gifted by Black Elk, Vogel nurtured his Echinacea plans in Teufen, establishing a strong, healthy crop, which was used to create the first batch of Echinaforce®.

Bioforce, who market A Vogel's products in the UK, very generously gifted us 30 boxes of Echinacea purpurea seeds - the same variety that Black Elk once gave to Alfred Vogel.

We sowed some in small pots, ready to transplant into the park in about six weeks time.  We won't see any flowers for two years - but we think they will be worth waiting for.

Thank you Mobex

Mobex East Lothian is a youth based referral project, the aim of which is to deliver training programmes designed in consultation with young people to build confidence, group awareness, leadership and team work skills.

This can include outdoor activities such as bushcraft and watersports, practical involvement with accredited environmental projects, creative arts and craftsm or activities which promote environmental awareness and community regeneration.

The Mobex team have been hard at work installing the timber edging for the paths in the community garden.

Thank you to the Mobex volunteers for all they have done - the Friends of Cuthill Park really appreciate your efforts!

Workshop: Where do we GROW now?

A workshop for community food growers on finding new places to grow fruit and veg in our towns and cities

Tuesday 29 May 2012

6pm to 8pm (registration and sandwiches from 5.30pm)

The Space, Media Education, 183 Dalry Road, Edinburgh

What is it about?

We want to help more communities in Scotland to find more spaces and new ways to grow their own food. National research published last year highlighted that more and more people in Scotland want to grow their own fruit and veg but land availability is a major constraint.

Scottish Government has funded greenspace scotland to bring together community groups who are working on food growing and local food projects to create a vision of ‘our ideal food growing community’.

We will create a visual plan of a typical Scottish settlement which

·           illustrates the range of different community growing models (e.g. allotments, community gardens, edible landscapes) and

·           matches these to the different places where community growing could happen (e.g. school grounds, backgreens, temporary spaces, even road side planters)

At end of the project we will have a big map of a typical Scottish settlement that illustrates all of different places where community growing can happen with supporting information on each of these.

We see it being used by communities to spark ideas, identify which types of growing they want to take forward, and to begin to map their own community growing vision and plans. It will help them to:

·           take a more strategic and community wide approach to community food growing

·           consider all of the different land and growing options that are available to them

·           select the ‘right’ growing model for specific sites and circumstances

What will we do?

This event will involve us in discussing and mapping out the different places and ways communities can grow food. A graphic artist will help us to record and illustrate these. We need your ideas, expertise and knowledge to help us do this.

Please join us and other community growers to help us to help more communities to grow their own.

Places are limited and so please request registration from and return to info@greenspacescotland.org.uk by 21 May 2012

·           If you are personally unable to attend – we would welcome another representative/representatives from your project/group to attend in your place

·           Travel expenses for community representatives can be refunded - a claim form will be provided at the event

·           This workshop will be repeated on Thursday 31 May 2012 in Glasgow – please let me know if you would prefer to attend this session

Kind regards

Ea

________________________________________________________________________

greenspace scotland is an independent Scottish charity and social enterprise that works with a wide range of national and local organisations to ensure that everyone has easy access to quality greenspace. Creating a growing community is one of our current projects; find out more about greenspace scotland here www.greenspacescotland.org.uk

greenspace scotland - transforming urban spaces into people places

Ea O'Neill
Project Manager

greenspace scotland12 Alpha Centre
Stirling University Innovation Park
Stirling
FK9 4NF
Tel:  01786 465934
Fax: 01786 469679

Ea.O'Neill@greenspacescotland.org.uk
www.greenspacescotland.org.uk
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