We're very excited to see what this month's volunteers from local company Crane have been up to! On their April visit, the team of six split into two groups - one helped Garden Club build two new raised beds for our Growing Ability project, and one group started to paint the woodwork inside the Pavilion. The next group of Crane volunteers are due to visit on 4th May - we can't wait to see what they achieve!
We very much enjoyed our recent Quiz Night and are delighted to announce that it raised £700 this year for our projects! Big thanks go to the events team who organised it and to all who attended. Special thanks go to Brigid Bassindale and her boys for setting and scoring another top-notch evening of quizzery!
Today marked the first day of a mutually beneficial relationship for the Triangle Garden: it was our first volunteer morning with employees from local components company Crane, of Wilbury Way. Crane's American parent company have a very strong community ethos and we are delighted that their Hitchin branch has chosen us as their charity partner in their latest volunteering enterprise.
The snowdrops are here and even in the snow they are a cheerful sight!
We're delighted to announce that our funding bid for £1000 to Herts County Council's 2017-18 Locality fund has been approved by Cllrs Judi Billing and Derrick Ashley (thank you Councillors!) and we now have the funds to buy the materials to rebuild our raised allotment beds. And thanks to a fantastic offer by a local building company we have the volunteers to help build them - more about this next week.
If you look hard enough this week you should see some tiny Winter Aconites peeping out from the undergrowth along the path under the lime trees. Some are over but a few are still in flower. These lovely little buttercup-like plants are among the first up to catch the spring sunlight, and live out their short growth season before the tree canopies leaf out and cast too much shade. Thier latin name is Eranthis hyemalisand they come from the deciduous woodlands of southern France, Italy and the Balkans where they carpet the woodland floor at this time of year.
We'd like to say a big thank you to local landscape and arboricultural firm Arborcare for donating some lovely plants that were surplus to one of their planting schemes on Friday. They will look great under the lime trees along the bark path through the Triangle Garden and in our Forest Garden. Our Garden Club and Growing Gang are going to love planting them out!
Today our brave Sunday volunteers, organised and led by Garden Club leader Steve Granger, created a attractive and effective bank stabalisation structure from hazel and willow. Willow Spiling involves using stout hazel poles to create a line of uprights along the edge of the riverbank. These are set at an angle leaning away from the river. Wands of willow (which the Triangle Garden has in abundance) are then woven through the hazel poles to create a strong structure.
Here's a recent blogpost by our volunteer Karen Shields (left above with Project Manager and Horticultural Therapist Liz McElroy) for the Complementary and Natural Healthcare News all about her role in our Growing Health project:
"I qualified as a nutritional therapist in 2012 and joined CNHC that year and began practising at my own clinic. In June 2016 I started volunteering (in my capacity as a nutritional therapist) at the Triangle Community Garden in Hitchin.
Read all about what we've been up to this last year in our Annual Review - just follow the link below http://www.trianglegarden.org/events/agm-2017 and click on the link marked 'Poster' at the bottom of the page
