The first Community Tree Planting day will be Saturday 13 November with trees kindly provided by the Woodland Trust.  Please download and print this poster and put up in your window, noticeboard or local shop.  All welcome: meet in Picton Square (outside Bells) at 10.30 for a morning’s clearing, digging and planting.

If you can’t make this community tree planting day, our next one will be on the weekend of 4/5 December, with trees kindly provided by the Forest of Avon Trust.  Further volunteer workdays are being run to build the community planting area in Montpelier Park on November 16 and 20.  Hope to see you soon!

This phase is expected to take about 8 weeks, during which the playground will still be accessible, but the ball court will not.  For those living next to the park it will clearly be unpleasant to be next to a construction site, and the contractors have committed to working co-operatively with neighbours wherever possible.  They will need to ensure parking doesn’t obstruct plant entering, but machinery will not operate before 8.30am, and is unlikely to operate on weekends.

Two further phases of work are dependent on two further funding applications; to SITA Trust for the ball court, and Biffaward for the spectator seating.  We have been accepted through to their funding boards and hope to hear from them both by November. Funding searches for the skateable space in the corner have not been started (about £15k); if you have any ideas for where we could look that would be great!  The Council have also just sent the landowner of the strip across the middle of the park an offer for his land, so hopefully all the park will shortly come into community ownership.

There will be an info board at Saturday’s Beanfeast in the park with a large map of the different phases and if we can get hold of a key, we hope to keep the phase plan on the noticeboard in the Park, so you can see it even if you can’t make Saturday.

Ways to take part include:
performance (music, spoken word, walkabout)
making decorations
hosting a craft stall
running a skills sharing workshop
sharing your homegrown produce
being a candidate for Montpelier Mayor or Queen Bean in the mock elections
helping to run silly games and craft activities
help to organise a ‘heritage lunch’ for older residents of Montpelier

On the day, we need volunteers to help with stewarding, putting up decorations, assisting with cake/bean/tea stalls and clearing up afterwards.

If you’re able to join this happy team, please get in touch!  You can see the ‘get involved’ flyer here
Sally Jenkins
Event Coordinator
montpelierbeanfeast@yahoo.co.uk
07866 748193

About the event
This community street festival is a resurrection of an annual event from the eighteenth century, which historical accounts say originally featured mock elections of a Mayor and Sheriff, ‘delighted spectators’ and ‘various high jinks’. It is now a celebration of local heritage, local harvest and local genius and features music, mock elections, crafts workshops and procession, local produce exchange, ‘homemade’ stalls and lots of neighbours getting to know each other.
The event takes place in St Andrews Road and Montpelier Park. It is free to attend, although donations towards costs are much appreciated.  All organisers are unpaid volunteers from the local area.

Can you help out with this year's Bean Feast? We need lots of people to make it a success!

Thingloop, a Bristol start-up promoting sharing and collaborative consumption

How to set up a food-buying group, 7th July (registration form)

Herb walks, May-October

Invasive weed pulling, 17th July

Community-supported agriculture project at Frenchay

The next outdoor session will be Sat 29th May 10am to 3pm in Picton Square.  Come and tell us what you like and don’t like about urban greening so far, and what you want to see in the future!

The next planning meeting for those who want to help coordinate activities and find funding is on Weds 26th May at 8pm.  Please email shiona_macp@hotmail.com for location details.

Planning permission has been applied for the whole Park, and is currently being considered. The plan submitted is here. It is due to be decided upon by the end of April. The work has been put out to tender, and prices are due to come back in the first week of April.

BT have now removed the telephone kiosk, and we plan to infill the hole and match the wall to the surrounding when funds allow.

The Community Cashback fencing is now installed, and as the tendering prices came in below budget, the £10,000 has also funded new drop bollards at the entrance and new self-closing gates at the pavement to prevent children running out on the road, and dog signs for the playground.

The fence is not as high as we would have liked, so we are working with the council to raise it; the funding had to be spent by March, so they ran out of time to get planning permission for a higher fence.

We met with the Council this week to discuss progress, and may have made a breakthrough on the issue of the land strip within the Park that is not owned by BCC. As this land has been untended for 9 years, BCC legal department had been advising that we do not contact the owner and wait for a further 3 years to enable them to apply for possession. BCC have now changed their stance, and we are hoping to meet with the owner of the strip soon. We aim to secure their permission for work on their land, which will enable us to secure the Biffaward £50,000, and enable us to continue applying for further grants. Without their permission, grant funds cannot be spent on their land.

We are currently working hard on the Lottery bid to reclaim the rear wasteground, which is due in on May 12th. This is a standalone project on council land, so will go ahead regardless of whether we manage to resolve the ownership / permission issue of the land strip.

We are still waiting for a reply to our letter from Jon Rogers about the chronic underfunding of Montpelier’s parks. Hugh Holden of the Bristol Parks Forum also raised the issue with Tracey Morgan, the new manager of the Parks department. If you feel like dropping them your own note about it, their email addresses are: jon.rogers@bristol.gov.uk and tracey.morgan@bristol.gov.uk.

Happy Easter!

Simon, Shiona, Will and Piers

The Mapping Day on Sunday went very well, with about 30 people in attendance and everyone enjoying the walk and cakes.  Many people felt uncomfortable identifying gardens as ‘untended’.

ACTION:  Pete to compile an overall map of Montpelier from the individual ones we walked with, to be published here, excluding the untended gardens as we felt this was more subjective and potentially insulting.

ACTION: Sally, Ingrid and Claudia to design a community gardening space in the grafitti wall / bench corner of Montpelier Park for the Lottery funding bid.  Andy Spargo (park landscape architect) is happy to draw this up formally for us, but needs to have it by end April.

Six potential ‘hotspots’ were identified:

1. Station (platform, embankment and approach)

2. Rainbow Bridge (Fairfield and Hurlingham sides)

3. Picton Square (between Bells and Gallifords)

4. Coburg Corner (meeting Ashley Hill)

5. Rosa Parks Lane (at Albany Green)

6. Magpie (Picton St / Ashley Road)

The issues for each hotspot were briefly discussed, and it was agreed to focus on those where there were clear ‘adopters’ taking responsibility for the area to ensure we don’t spread ourselves too thinly in the early days.  The first three hotspots were chosen by the group.  If someone wants to take responsibility for any of the other hotspots (or indeed, any other area – we were short on attendees from around Albany Green), we will be happy to support them too.

We then split off into hotspot groups according to our interests, and discussed how to get things moving.

Station: (Sally, Lucy, Steve) Holding two action afternoons to initiate planting w/c 26  April or w/c 3 May.  Lucy to contact Period Fireplaces regarding triangular strip.  Shiona to contact Miles Harris to establish land ownership and block grass cutting.  Sally to contact Eastside roots re Network Rail.

Square: (Shiona, Ingrid, Karen, Simon, Esther) Holding a May Day consultation and planting event, with a waterbutt installation workshop, planter building session and inviting design ideas for the space.  Esther identifying cost savings to businesses if recycle waste.  Meeting Fri 26 to speak with business owners re bin issues.

Rainbow: (Chris, David, Claudia, Danny, Mima)  to make contact with Mary Bright and discuss her plans and the best way to work together.  Sally/Claudia to approach Fairfield School to initiate work in playground.  Shiona to contact Miles Harris to establish land ownership and block grass cutting.

ACTION: Shiona to send round an email regarding a group name.

Steve’s leaf image was liked by everyone and picked for use on posters and signs.  ACTION Steve to forward blank leaf image to group for use in posters etc.

ACTION: Shiona, Danny and Karen to look for funding, with Quartet, Network Rail and greenspaces as a starting point.

As well as our most valuable resource – people power (!) – we are also in need of materials to transform these spaces. If you have anything to offer, or know of a great place to get things (either for free or at good value) then please let us know by posting a comment below or emailing shiona_macp@hotmail.com.  The most obvious items we will need are:

• Compost
• Well rotted manure
• Top Soil
• Wood and other materials to make raised beds
• Screws/nails etc
• Water butts (or equivalent)
• Seeds
• Plants
• Trees for replanting
• Organic plant food (eg comfrey tea, seaweed extracts)

Any ideas on sources of funding for these items would also be extremely welcome!

Many thanks, the Growing Team

The aim is to identify:

• existing green space (however small)
• potential hard space for planters or digging out
• potential green roof space
• untended gardens to approach to offer assistance and/or gardenshare

Action points from the meeting are here; our next meeting will be Thursday 25 March at 8pm in the Old Fairfield School to discuss the results of the Mapping Day.  We will aim to focus our energies on a few ‘quick win’ areas of Montpelier to demonstrate what’s possible over the next few months, with the goal of creating a Trail across the whole area over the next few years.

The meeting opened with Miguel Mendonca’s talk following intros and welcomes from two Dans. Miguel presented some key points from his work which has contributed to the incoming feed-in tariffs. Miguel has worked for many years on ways of developing the green economy and has presented his findings to many places around the world and can now add Montpelier to the list that includes Brussels and Capitol Hill in Washington DC!

Basically the feed in tariff will encourage the take up of Solar PV (photo-voltaic) panels which produce electricity that when not used in the home, feeds into the national grid for which the owner will be paid a premium rate. As such, with a healthy take up it provides an excellent way for individuals and community groups to influence government economic policy to be more sustainably oriented. A feed-in tariff for solar thermal (hot water) will come in next year.

Click here for a link to a spreadsheet provided by Montpelier’s solar company, 1World Solar run by Jon Walker which calculates the return you can make on solar PV. (If you can book up a system before April you are possibly still eligible to a £2000+ grant.)

Project group sand notices were next and following a short summary of Monday’s Tescos meeting, brief presentations were then made by individuals keen to get projects going on Food (Sally), Open Spaces (Shiona) and Energy (Dan). The meeting then broke up into smaller groups to start work on the projects.

Details of all these can be seen if you scroll down or click on each group below for a direct link.

Energy

Food

Open Spaces

The March 6^th painting of the Resource Centre room has been postponed. Thanks to all who have said they would help do this. We will keep you informed.