Hello to all our followers out there in the ethers of the internet! It’s that time of month again for another update of life at the Tree Life Centre. Everyone here hopes you didn’t miss us at the end of May and throughout June during our closed period, all the volunteers missed the Centre and were all very pleased to see each other again when we re-opened at the beginning of the month to crack on with all of our activities. Since we have all been very busy working towards our new schedule of events which is slowly falling into place with the groups becoming more and more active. You can see the Centre’s new weekly rota in a previous blog here.
Another change to the running of the Centre is we are on the look-out for two new dedicated Volunteer Officers (VO) to assist in running the whole Centre and to work alongside our existing VO’s/Key Volunteers in various roles. To find out more about these new opportunities click here. The role is an excellent stepping stone to employment within the conservation and community sectors. Our current Project Officer came through this systems, as have many others throughout TCV nationwide, and the author of this blog has also used the VO experience in helping secure a paid role as a Project Co-ordinator for a community horticulture project with another local charity.
Anyway, that’s the “boring” (but important) stuff out of the way, time to tell you all about what we’ve been up to!
If any of you visited the Harbour Festival in Bristol this past weekend and saw some random potted trees dotted around the place then they could have been grown by us!
- A lorry full of trees!
We lent some of our lovely trees to Happy City to add some green to their space at the festival. Hopefully the trees enjoyed the firework display but we are still waiting for their postcard from their travels, but as always it will probably arrive now they have returned!
Elsewhere, across the site the herb garden is slowly taking shape with some herbs being bought and planted, but as you can expect the weather has hampered many of our attempts at getting more as keeping our new ones alive is a challenge in itself!
- Plants at last!
We have also started to put up some fencing at the back of the garden to help provide shelter and as a frame to grow some native climbers to keep with the theme.
The other other groups are pressing on well with the Edible Plants Project working flat out with all the veg in the ground as its the key time of year coming up to harvest but also protecting it from pest. However, the other week they did manage to find time to make a rather lovely elderflower cordial after collecting local flowers and then distilling their brew. As far as I’m aware everyone survived the tasting sessions with many requests for more!
Our other group, the Wildflower Group, has been hard at work trying to re-establish all of our wildflowers after our shut-down period by clearing/tidying many of the beds for wildflowers alongside seed preparation, preparing a new batch or plants to be put on sale and planning the next seasons flowers.
Elsewhere, the other major news is our new cabin has tentatively started to be put to use by the volunteers as the outdoor area has been completed (pictures to follow) and we will officially be opening it in the coming weeks. Big thanks have to be paid to Western Power Distribution for part funding it but more about that in a dedicated blog when the cabin is ‘officially’ open! Hopefully the cabin will help boost the look of the public area and make the Centre more appealing to visitors as a group of volunteers have been hard at work tidying the whole entrance area and, fingers crossed, boost sales!
Parish notices:
The main notices about the Centre’s new weekly working rota and the two new roles have been covered but if you want to know any further information about either then please do get in contact with us.
Don’t forget you can also earn a qualification in worked based horticulture with us, if you are interested then please do geet in touch.
Finally…you can always follow/like us on Facebook and Twitter for more up-to-date goings on here!