Meadows community members build third round of compost boxes

At the start of April, we ran two workshops which saw residents build three compost boxes to support Victoria Primary School’s mini-community garden initiative.

The garden has planters for herbs and flowers, and now will have a community compost site for residents and families to minimise food waste. This project has been supported by the Green Meadows Ideas Fund. The compost site will be the third in the Meadows, with the other sites at Queens Walk Recreation Ground and the Memorial Gardens. Thanks to everyone’s hard work, the boxes have a new and improved design - check out the photos below!

Thank you to everybody who is keeping the Meadows' compost movement growing. It’s amazing to see how residents are transforming the area!

Stay tuned for next month's newsletter, which will have updates on the locations of the compost boxes and more from Victoria Primary School.

April’s LOVE THE MEADOWS Action Day was one we had been looking forward to!

This time, residents installed planters in the Bridgeway Centre to grow fruit, veg and herbs. These thoughtfully designed planters have benches for extra seating and space for a wide range of plants, adding life and colour to precinct.

In the weeks that followed, we ran Edible Meadows Plotting and Planting Sessions, where the community brainstormed what they would like to grow in the planters, and set about planting them up with edible plants and veg.

Thanks to everybody who got involved and helped bring the planters to life – they look beautiful!

Coming up…

LOVE THE MEADOWS Action Day Saturday, 3 May, 10am

We’ll meet at the Bridgeway Centre at 10 am for a morning of litterpicking, watering the veg and flowers we planted last week and then sitting down to plan the next 6 months of Action Days. Do you have any ideas? Come and share them!

Everybody is welcome! Meet other people in the community, learn skills and contribute to the local area. We hope to see you there!

**Pop-up Café,** **Arkwright Meadows Community Gardens, Saturday 3 May, 12pm**

In the afternoon, we'll head over to the Pop-up Café at AMC Gardens.
There will be cake, May Pole dancing, live music and the inauguration of 'Celebrating Nature', an exhibition by Arkwright Artists, supported by Green Meadows.

Checking in with the DIY Club

During April’s DIY Clubs, members worked together to build workbenches for the Men’s Sheds initiative at the Meadows Foodbank.

Community Engagement Officers Heather and Laura delivered the workbench to the guys at the Bridges Project, who were over the moon with the result.

Alongside the fold out bench, they let us know that a flat workbench would be a handy addition.

We took this on board and got the plans in to place, with DIY Club member Ron kindly drawing up the measurements and a how to guide. During our recent DIY Club we got to work bringing it to life. Whilst members build this, another member worked on fixing a broken chair, using our handy tools and materials.

Check it out!

DIY Club is every Friday, 4-8pm at the NEP Climate Hub, 32 Turney St, NG2 2LG. Bring items to repair, projects you’d like to work on or join in with community projects. Tools, materials, hot drinks, and biscuits provided!

Everybody is welcome, no matter how much DIY experience you have - what you don’t know someone else will! Let us know you’re coming.

DIY Workshops: New additions to the workshop line up & evening times added

Our free DIY Workshops have been helping people in the community learn key skills for some time now. We have received requests to run more evening workshops, providing a range of times to cater to everyone, so we are pleased to announce upcoming workshops on Thursday evenings 17:45-20:15, alongside the usual Friday mornings.

Upcoming evening sessions:

Intro to Hand and Power Tools
Thursday 8 May 17:45-20:15
DIY Internal Wall Insulation
Friday 16 May, 17:45 – 20:15
Intro to Trickle Vents & Ventilation
Thursday 29 May, 17:45 – 20:15

New additions:

Demonstration of External Wall Insulation

For the first time, we’re running demonstrations of external wall insulation, where participants can view the installation of wood fibre panels in real-time and have a go at installing it themselves!