September was a very busy month for the Friends of Maryhill Park! Click the links to jump to the bits you are interested in, or read it all 🙂
AGM
The Friends of Maryhill Park held their 2016 AGM on the 27th September. The same office bearers are continuing for the next year. Accounts will be finalised and formally approved prior to the next meeting, which will be on the 22nd November. The minutes for the AGM can be found here.
F.o.M.P. Update
It’s been a busy month for F.oM.P.!
Community Garden
We were very grateful to learn that our second round of Stalled Spaces funding was approved. This means that we can move on with Phase 2 of our community garden. We have installed a secure container, paid for by other funding which will make the Phase 2 build much easier.
We plan to install a food forest in beds along the brick wall. This will be planted with fruit trees as the canopy layer, and then underplanted with fruiting shrubs and smaller fruiting plants. The fruit will be available to all.
We also plant to install some more beds for wildlife planting, and also some more seating both in the centre of the garden and also overlooking the tennis courts.
Tennis Courts
We know that when they are in good condition the courts are used, and that people will travel to use them. Unfortunately this season they were never really brought up to scratch for a variety of reasons. In the future we hope to work in partnership with Glasgow Life to bring the courts back up to a playable standard for next season and onwards. The hope is that F.o.M.P. will take on the day to day maintenance and smaller jobs, and Glasgow Life will do the big jobs that require specialist equipment and qualifications.
Gardening Club
Another of the proposals put forward at the AGM was for a Maryhill Park gardening club. We realise that while the volunteers are successful, they exclude those who have other commitments on a Sunday, and those who don’t particularly enjoy dedicating an afternoon to hard manual labour! Another issue is that the volunteers simply do not have enough time to focus on maintaining decorative areas of the park.
The hope is to create a midweek gardening club that focuses on maintaining decorative areas in the park, as well as the community garden. We hope that it could become a form of community education, teaching people about plants and planting.
Volunteers Update
During September the Volunteers trimmed the laurel hedges in the park, as well as other interior hedges, We also cleared the drainage along the Lime Avenue, a task made much easier by the fact that we did this last year as well, so there was much less heavy digging 🙂 We hope this will help to stop the Lime Avenue icing up during the winter months.
Events
The Friends of Maryhill Park were involved in a couple of events during the month. We were invited to have a stand at Maryhill Burgh Halls as part of their Doors Open Day. They had invited a variety of community groups along, and it was a useful event to let more people know about the work we do.
We also hosted an event for Glasgow Wildfest. The event was run by the RSPB and OPALÂ and was well attended with families completing tree trails, and making wildflower seed bombs. It was also a good chance to chat with the RSPB about the ongoing maintenance and renewal of our sparrow beds.
Wildlife Spots
- Flock of goldfinches feeding on the seed heads in the meadow
- Lots of varieties of bumblebees feeding on the flowers we planted for them in the community garden.
- Lots of beautiful fungi – yes, really!
What have you seen?
Free Stuff!
There are lots of free resources to help you and your family enjoy the outdoors even more!
Most of the things in the noticeboard come from Nature Detectives which is run by the Woodland Trust. You can sign up here to be sent a free autumn discovery pack from the Woodland Trust.
An organisation called Grow Wild gives out free wildflower seeds to groups and organisations. You can sign up here for a free pack of wildflower seeds.