LEAP Work Party
We had a good day in St George's park planting for Let's Eat the Park. We had a good response to the call for a work party with Sue and Margaret doing a litter pick, while Barry, Marilyn, Nicky, Spike, Carol and Rob got on with planting red onions, garlic and more strawberries than you can shake a stick at. The onions and garlic went into the new planting area recently cleared by the Prince's Trust students near the paddling pool. The stawberries joined last year's crop on the wall garden between the shelter and the Radford Avenue perimeter path. WFDC parks department responded to our call to them to manage a waste disposal issue that had unexpectedly cropped up, once again demonstrating the value of the close relationship that exists between the Friends of the park and our local authority coproducers.
The weather was very kind to us today given that it is the end of November, it was a lovely mild dry morning to be outdoors and working together planting the park with edibles and generally looking after our community green spaces.
Not everyone is always as considerate as we might hope, but nothing daunts the passion of the LEAP team - drawn from local people - we see our vision unfolding in our neighbourhoods and we know we can make positive change happen, we already have a track record of change in our parks where LEAP is continuously moving forward. The 'feel good factor' of working together to maintain and increase the productivity of our park is experienced by all who take part. We think everybody benefits from a bit of 'green therapy' every once in a while and for that reason five LEAP team delegates will be attending a Thrive training event in Birmingham in the New Year. Thanks to funding from the People's Health Trust we are sending five volunteers to a course in Social and Therapeutic Gardening which gives an insight into the theory and practice of social and therapeutic horticulture and how gardening can be beneficial for peoples’ physical health and emotional well-being. We hope to benefit from the training in a number of ways, in the meantime we'll continue getting on with the practice in a haven for nature in the central zone of Kidderminster.