In January Upper Lighthorne opened the doors to our first Time bank community drop-in funded by the UKSPF grant scheme.
The community drop-in has seen over 20 people sign up so far to get involved in helping other members of their community.
It is early days, but we are busy organising a litter pick, and the village hall “growing garden” so watch this “green” space!
In Upper Lighthorne we are cultivating our resident’s association. A group of residents are heading up a task and finish group and are busy drawing up its constitution and relevant policies so that they can start planning community activities. We have secured £3000 from the parish council and plans are underway for a community picnic in June on the green between our allotment and play area to coincide with Big Green week. Upper Lighthorne also formed the allotment association task and finish group this month. Their first face-to-face meeting is in early February, and we are looking forward to doing the groundwork in partnership with Trustgreen to form a strong and sustainable, community lead committee.
Coffee morning attendees have also been busy kitting for our nature day and swift awareness day. I think you will agree the results are amazing!
On the 27th of January, residents took part in Big Garden Birdwatch which is one of the UK’s biggest citizen science wildlife surveys, that provides a snapshot in time of how garden birds are doing in the UK. We turned the Village Hall into a giant hide and those who could not join us posted their sightings on the local nature of Upper Lighthorne Facebook page.
Here are a few of the pictures that were taken during the Birdwatch.
The first Avon Valley Bowls Club quiz night took place this month with 60 participants. Due to its success, another quiz is planned for March.
Plans are also underway to start digging up the car park where an outdoor bowls area will be placed. Thanks to the generous offer from the newly developed stakeholders’ residents will be able to play outside in the fresh air as well as access inside facilities. The Bowls for Health programme also restarted in January with 14 new Upper Lighthorne residents signing up.
The British Motor Museum is one of the local employers working closely with our community. We collected a variety of donations this week consisting of a range of educational resources. The local primary school enjoyed a visit to the museum this month and the children tired out the community champion by walking her to the museum and back. Green pledges such as this will help us secure our bee-friendly school status and hopefully, a grant to fund outdoor classroom equipment. With help from the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and the developers, we hope to have an update on the school’s green plans by spring.
The community nature group have been up to a lot lately, creating bug hotels, wildflower areas and adding to the village hall community garden.
The Bee friendly group have been disucussing how to enhance some areas on the development like at the bowls club and have now planted wildflowers in multiple ares including lots of bee friendly plants to help the local wildlife and brighten the area, as well as created some bug hotels which the group have been adding too.
The village hall garden is also starting to come to life, after planting seeds in April. So far, tomatoes, strawberries, courgettes, lavender, mint and sage are starting to sprout and most of the veg will eventually be transferred into allotments but we are planning to put some more flowers outside during the Bee celebrations coming up in May.
Barrat David Wilson homes kindly funded the local scouts club to play an evening of bowls at the Avon Valley Bowls club.
It was a great night and the Children really enjoyed learning how to bowl and putting it into practice. During the evening lots of new families in the area joined and had the opportunity to explore this wonderful hidden asset.
The Avon Valley Bowls club is directly opposite the new housing development and the club is welcoming the new communtity and embracing the opportunites it will bring for them.
To celebrate hedgehog awareness week the community have had a lot of activities going on thoughout the week.
The nature knitters group have been knitting hedgehogs, the after school club have been celebrating by designing and making there own paper hedgehogs and checking there community garden to see how it is coming along (and to see if they could spot any hedgehogs).
We have also been raising awareness this week through putting stickers on the equipment used on site to warn the Maintenance staff to check the area for hedgehogs before using.
To celebrate World Bee Day there were lots of activities going on throughout the community. In the church yard there were lots of activities including seed sowing, bee spotting with bee identification sheets, how to make bee baths using stones and old water bottles and other activitied for the children. At the village hall the nature group had fun finishing off their bug hotel and planting more flowers and vegetables.
More importantly this was a great oportunity for the nature group to establish support from the church in setting up an offical group and somebody they can raid money for. they discussed there joint ambition to apply for funds and run more projects that can involve the community in more of the work that the groups are doing at the village hall.
Recently some members of keen gardeners and nature enthusiats in the community formed the “Nature of Upper Lighthorne” community group. The group has already worked hard on enhancing the biodiversity around the local area, growing lots of flowers, plants, fruit and vegetables in the community garden including paper daisies, cosmos, lavender and strawberries.
The strawberries that were grown in the community garden were harvested and used for the timebank café.
From saturday the 29th of June to Sunday the 7th of July it was Swift Awareness Week. Swifts are a red listed species that are declining in numbers that usually arrive in the UK from early May. This week is aimed to share awareness of the need to maintain and create nest sites for them on local properties and to monitor this endangered birds.
This week the nature community group in Upper Lighthorne hosted a day filled with swift themed activities and lots of information about the birds and what people can do within the community to help them. The nature knitters group also created some knitted swifts and shared some photos of them around of the community garden.
Recently the local school held a school fair where they had lots of fun activities for the children along with raffles and some shop stalls.
The fair was a great way to encourage community togetherness with lots of activities for the children such as crafting, face painting, games, tombola’s with lots of prizes to win.
In addition to these activities, the fair also included a low-cost uniform stall which was funded by a grant and run by a parent volunteer, they were also giving out free essentials like toothbrushes and toothpaste to help to support the community to find ways to navigate the current cost of living crisis.
Overall, the event successfully brought the community together, encouraging children to share and participate in activities while supporting parents and other community members who attended.
The community held a village hall fair which raised £862 over the course of the day. The fair had lots of fun activities to get involved with along with stalls of local businesses selling a range of different products including clothes, food and craft items.
The local community nature group had a stall for information about what’s going on around the community and information about the bees and pollinators The local air ambulance had a stall to fundraise and hosted a raffle and lucky dips with lots of prizes and there was a DJ stand and lots of fun activities for the kids to get stuck in with.
This week is World Wellbeing Week 2024 which celebrates all areas of wellbeing.
Trustgreen partnered with Redrow to host a forest school session in Haig Woods for pupils from Hill Top Primary Academy.
On the 17th May 2024, the Trustgreen team gathered in Tarporley for the Annual General Meeting (AGM).
Amelia Marshall discusses the importance of pollinators and cross-pollination in the UK, as well as threats to pollinators and ways to help them in our latest blog post.
This Month the Trustgreen team took part in Spring Clean Cymru. The nation’s biggest mass-action environmental campaign.
We have been recognised with an International CSR Award for our commitment to social responsibility.
Trustgreen has achieved the second consecutive year of being a verified carbon-neutral organisation, demonstrating our commitment to sustainability, environmental stewardship, and combatting climate change.
Amelia Marshall shares her knowledge surrounding the importance and benefits of wetlands.
Amelia Marshall shares her knowledge on how trees grow, how to spot a dying tree, when to plant a tree, and how to Protect them in our latest blog post.