A little late but here it is, my blog post about the exciting month that was July. My excuse for the lateness of this post is the Birmingham In Bloom judging, and I’m hoping that I’ll be forgiven! The regional judging took place mid-July and the national judging was at the start of August, and I have been very busy working with the council in the build up to these days. It has been an exciting time and Birmingham has been looking its absolute best, with planters overflowing with flowers, the council’s floral displays from Chelsea on show and volunteers out in full force to help everything look wonderful. Although we don’t find out our results until October, we’ve got a good feeling about how both days went and we are hoping that the judges were blown away by the floral excellence and community spirit on show. After the National judging I got the opportunity to meet the two judges. They told me how impressed they were with all the partnership working that goes on in Birmingham, and, when they asked me what I do, I was able to further accentuate the partnership working aspect when I explained that I work for TCV in partnership with Birmingham City Council, and that I have been helping the team at the council prepare for Birmingham In Bloom, and feel very proud to have been part of it.
Edgbaston Guinea Gardens, one of the stops on the In Bloom route – photo courtesy of Nicola Bradley (twitter.com/birminghaminbloom)
Other great things that happened in July include the festival CoCo Mad, one of the biggest events in a Birmingham park. A feat of community participation, CoCo Mad is organised entirely by the Friends of Cotteridge Park, and this year attracted over 6000 people. It is a family fun day on a huge scale, with music, crafts, food, drinks, dance, circus performances, storytelling with the National Trust, marshmallows on a campfire with the rangers, and even tree climbing. Our stall was a little different than usual, as we were accompanied by Urban Smoothie Bikes. The smoothie bikes went down a storm and we had people queuing up to blend up their own tasty smoothie. Volunteers from Mondelez, working as apprentices at the nearby Cadbury’s factory, were eager to lend their support in promoting the Health for Life programme by handing out seed packets, manning the smoothie bikes and helping people pick out plants for their mini edible gardens. It was a great day, with a little help from the weather, and lots of people went home with fruit, vegetables and herbs to grow in their own gardens.
Smoothie bikes and mini edible gardens attracting lots of interest at CoCo Mad – photo courtesy of twitter.com/TCVBirmingham
We have also kicked off six weeks of summer children’s activities in the Ladywood area of Birmingham. We are hoping to raise TCV’s profile in the rest of Birmingham, not just within the Health for Life programme which covers south Birmingham. Children aged between two and 14 have been taking part in craft activities and games, creating bug hotels, and making fruit skewers. In the next few weeks we will be making bird boxes and building dens. I am enjoying these Wednesday afternoons as I have always loved working with children, and I am also hoping that it will help spread the word of TCV’s activities in Ladywood, such as the new Green Gym.
Making healthy fruit skewers – photo courtesy of twitter.com/TCV_Birmingham
The new Ladywood Green Gym has been running for over a month now and I have recently taken responsibility for it. For the last three weeks I have had a regular volunteer, which is great considering how recently these sessions have been set up, and as they gather momentum I am sure more and more people will become interested. We will be working with the rangers to improve the area around Edgbaston Reservoir, and have so far mulched the fruit trees that we planted in April with the Urban Orchard Project, and started working on the garden, weeding it and tidying up, so that it can be used for activities such as pond dipping.
I was very excited by the huge apples growing at the Edgbaston Orchard
I am looking forward to taking more ownership of the Ladywood Green Gym and I am also looking forward to starting work on my personal project, which has started moving forward. With not many months left there’s a lot to fit in, so I’d better get on with it!
Holly