St Martins TRA

Thanks to all those who came to the Greening Our Estate earlier in July. The official minutes are below. You might also want to check this write up from one of the participants

Present:
8 residents, plus representations from Metropolitan, Lambeth, Open Orchard, Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses, Father Nature and Palace Road TRA

Potential sites
We investigated the following potential sites (thanks to Petra for taking pictures):

The Notorious fly tipping site by 4 Neil Wates Crescent. Should be a good spot for bedding plants

The bin stores at the junction of High Trees & Abbots Park. Some climbing plants would make it smell less, and there’s some space beside for bedding plants

The grass outside 1-10 Gaywood Close. Should be a good spot for bedding plants

Nicholl Court – Some bedding plants by the back wall should prevent children climbing over the wall to retrieve lost balls

The waste ground at the junction of Roupell Road and Christchurch Road. Wayne from Open Orchard thinks he can get funding from the Mayor of London to turn that into a mini park

The communal garden on Kelyway House

Action points
Brockwell Park Greenhouses, Father Nature, Open Orchard and Vinnay will organise a stall at the St Martins Together project (Saturday 6th August, 1pm to 5pm at the Community Centre on Abbots Park). This will identify sites in addition to the ones we identified this evening
The same four groups will work together to get funding for the project sorted. Linda from Lambeth will help them.

By September we should have an idea of where we’re going to do planting and how we’re going to fund it. We then need help to do it from local residents and hopefully local schools, but we can discuss that nearer the time.

Conclusion
The Gardening partners all came to the TRA after the meeting and said that they were very excited about this project for two reasons:

• No one had put them all together before to create not only planting diversity to suit all areas and people but an idea for sustaining and continuing the education through Brockwell Park Greenhouse Education facilities. They loved the idea of working together.
• They so thought the enthusiasm and turn out was great and looked forward to sharing ideas and creating something worthwhile. They seemed very happy that the TRA was taking the lead and we were so together as a group in understanding what this project would entail in order to get it moving. This is great praise indeed.