Hi! My name is Alison. This year I am working at Carrickfergus Borough Council as the Natural Communities Outreach Officer (via The Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland).
I have always been passionate about nature and conservation and recently completed my master’s degree in Environmental Management so it’s great to be getting practical experience in this Natural Communities position. The main aim of my role is to engage the local community in conservation & environmental initiatives. A day could include anything from site visits, working outdoors with volunteers or a school group or meetings with community groups to discuss a new project.
I’ve been here for 2 months now and I’m only getting round to writing up my blog now because I’ve been so busy – so this is a realllly long blog!
I am working within the Parks and Countryside Team and my first few weeks mainly involved lots of site visits to get to know the area and meetings to get up to speed on on-going projects. I also jumped at the chance to attend as many seminars, courses and events as possible to expand my knowledge. For example, The Peoples Litter Summit held by Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful (http://www.keepnorthernirelandbeautiful.org/) and a very interesting series of seminars held by Belfast Healthy Cities (http://www.belfasthealthycities.com/). In a few weeks I am attending The Community Garden Forum. I love to hear about other projects and learn from them. I have also arranged for interested members of Carrick Council to visit Cloughmills who are doing amazing work – http://incredibleediblenetwork.org.uk/blog/incredible-edible-cloughmills-takes-big-step-forward – we are going in May & very much looking forward to it.
February was a learning curve. By March I had a better idea what I was expected to do and things really got interesting as I began work on some exciting new projects. Now, in April, these projects are past discussion stage and we are out working with the community.
Urban Gardeners – community groups had expressed interest in growing their own food so we wanted to create community gardens where people could grow fruit, veg and flowers. After discussions with local community groups to choose sites, we have now arranged a Community Garden Acivity Day in one area. At this we will be clearing space for the community garden, building raised beds and asking locals to put forward ideas on what they want for their garden.
Urban Greening – an idea to turn a number of streets in the Borough green with hanging baskets, flowers and possibly some fruiting trees and veg – inspired by similar schemes in the UK & further afield – http://www.fullfrontal.org.uk/ . This initiative is now coming to life and a public meeting has been arranged for the beginning of May. This will then be followed by a public planting day.
There are also plans to turn other unused green space all around Carrickfergus into wildflower pastures which will be significant for increasing biodiversity in the area, and I am in the process of creating a biodiversity garden. I am also really keen to get bee hives into one of our sites so am currently investigating the possibilities of this and taking a Bee-Keeping course in preparation. Here is my first attempt at making a frame – not bad eh?
I organized and completed my first tree planting event in March. With some of Brighter Whitehead (http://www.brighterwhitehead.co.uk/) a local community group, we planted a mixture of native trees – Alder, Birch, Scots Pine, Rowan, and White Thorn – at Jubilee Wood in Whitehead. This was part of the ‘One Million Trees in One Day’ campaign (http://www.onemilliontreesinoneday.com/). This was the first event I organized myself and it was a success! It was a beautiful sunny day and great craic. It was a real relief to complete my first event as I knew there would be many more to come.
We then held an open day at Eden Allotments on 29th March and I was there demonstrating how to plant seeds and vegetables – we provided the seeds, vegetables and pots and encouraged people to plant some in pots and take them home. This was linked to the One Pot Pledge (http://www.onepotpledge.org/). The hope was that the event would inspire people to continue growing at home and get involved in our gardening initiatives, allotments and other events. I set up this display on the morning as I wanted to show that growing your own is accessible and fun – everyone loved the massive spade!
There was a great turn-out and I spent the day showing children how to plant as well as speaking to adults interested in growing. Great day!
Throughout April I have been giving out 4,000 packs of sunflower seed packs to local school children to promote Carrickfergus in Bloom – (http://www.carrickfergusinbloom.org/bib.htm), it’s Tallest Sunflower Competition and to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Royal Horticultural Society’s Britain in Bloom. We’re trying to encourage young horticulturalists to join the thousands of young gardener’s throughout the UK in a mass-planting of sunflower seeds during National Gardening Week (which is this week 14th-20th April)
Last week I was involved in another tree planting day at Bashfordsland Wood. This was in conjunction with NIE and The Conservation Volunteers and 150 trees were planted. Another great day!
Looking forward to the rest of April, and May…and Summer.. and Autumn…! Everything! I am absolutly loving working as a Natural Communities Outreach Officer.
Bye for now 🙂