A big thank you to everyone who turned up to volunteer for our working party weekend on 6-7 April. We were lucky with the weather and managed to get a lot done in the time.
About 9 people turned up on Saturday and 3 on Sunday. Between us we sorted stones for building walls, primed and painted up some ironwork tree grills, filled in trenches for the power and water cables, did some potting on and watered seedlings.
Next weekend, at the Llanfrechfa Grange Walled Garden, we are planning to blitz the ground works in readiness for laying down the new paths.
We are planning 4 volunteer working party sessions, each one supervised by one of the charity Trustees.
The sessions will be on:
Sat 6 April 10.00 – 13.00 hrs
Sat 6 April 13.30 – 16.30 hrs
Sun 7 April 10.00 – 13.00 hrs
Sun 7 April 13.30 – 16.30 hrs
New faces are very welcome so don’t worry if you haven’t been before. We just ask that all volunteers wear appropriate footwear (no open toes) and run through a short health and safety briefing before we start. There will be a pick list of jobs to do, some light, some quite heavy, such as:
Refreshments will be available.
We would like to get an idea of numbers to help us organise the work, so if you would like to come along, please drop us a line at our email address: info.lgh.garden@gmail.com
Thank you. We look forward to seeing you.
Llanfrechfa Grange Walled Garden is delighted to be one of 12 communities from across Wales to be celebrated and presented with Certificates from the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government, Hannah Blythyn AM at an award ceremony at St Peter Community Garden Cardiff on Weds 20th March 2019.
These are the first community managed green spaces awards made by Social Farms and Gardens and are the culmination of the first year of funding from the Welsh Government to the Community Land Advisory Service Cymru.
Social Farms and Gardens wanted to acknowledge that gaining permission and starting to manage a green space; be it an orchard, community garden or a woodland; is the fruition of a huge amount of hard work, consultation, negotiation and organisation and these awards are to recognise the hard work and many achievements of all communities who manage green spaces. Through its Community Land Advisory Service (CLAS), it will continue to support them and other communities who seek to acquire land to manage green spaces. CLAS Cymru will also work with Keep Wales Tidy to help community green space projects achieve a Green Flag Community Award.
Hannah Blythyn said: “I congratulate all the projects being honoured today and thank them for all the work they do to improve the local environment in their communities. Green space is vitally important in providing opportunities for people to get into the outdoors, enjoy some fresh air and exercise which is vitally important for both their mental and physical wellbeing.”
CLAS Cymru Coordinator Lucie Taylor, said she is delighted to be honouring the considerable achievements of the community projects. “CLAS Cymru is pleased to provide vital advice and support to community managed green space projects just like those we are celebrating today. We want to ensure that more land in Wales is used for the benefit of local communities, so that we can drive up the quality and effectiveness of green spaces because we know they can have an enormous impact on our health and wellbeing.”
The 12 community projects are as follows –
Jan Smith, MBE and chair of Friends of Llanfrechfa Grange Walled Garden attended the event to accept the ward on behalf of the project, along with three of our regular volunteers.
Welcome to the latest issue of our newsletter for Winter 2018/19.
Download Winter 2018-19 Newsletter pdf file
In this issue:
Do you love the idea of the Walled Garden project but can’t garden or just don’t have green fingers? There are lots of other ways to volunteer or get involved. Right now, we are looking ahead to what events we need to plan for over the coming year and would really welcome any offers of help to take this forward.
We would like to form a small group to help us do this. The kind of things we need are:
If you would like to get involved or for more information, please contact Angela Fry, General Secretary – Friends of Llanfrechfa Grange Walled Garden at info.lgh.garden@gmail.com
Welcome to the Autumn 2018 edition of our newsletter ‘The Walled Garden’ which can be downloaded at this link:
The Walled Garden – Autumn 2018 pdf
In this issue:
It’s that time of year again when the Llanfrechfa Village Association holds it annual scarecrow competition. This year the Walled Garden project’s entry was Wales’ first Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas, complete with yellow jersey, Welsh flag and a bike!
We know he rode like the wind during the competition but the day the team put him in place at the entrance to the Llanfrechfa Grange hospital site, it was so blustery he nearly took off!
Thank you to all the volunteers who helped put him together. Our scarecrow was awarded joint 2nd place by the Llanfrechfa Village Association which we are very pleased with. The winner was War Horse, commemorating World War 1 by Caerleon and District, which was very well done. You can find pictures of the other entries at the Llanfrechfa Village Association’s Facebook page.
We would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who came along this weekend to help us prepare the ground for the installation of a new electrical and water supply around the garden. Everyone worked really hard and did a fantastic job.
The work involved weeding, moving piles of rubble and digging away part of the big soil “mountain” in the south of the Walled Garden to clear a route close to the walls so that a digger can get through to make the required trenches. The soil from the mountain was then transported to the other end of the garden to help level out some of the uneven ground in what will become the “productive” quadrant.
Here are some photos of the volunteers from the Saturday afternoon and Sunday crews. If anyone has any photos from Saturday morning, do please send them in to email: info.lgh.garden@gmail.com so that we can include as many volunteers as possible.
We are always ready to welcome new volunteers to this wonderful community gardening project in Torfaen. If you are interested in giving it a try, we are open every Monday during the day time and every Sunday morning 10.30 – 12.30. Visit our Volunteering page for more information.
The implementation of the Walled Garden design plan is moving ahead well. The central paving feature is almost complete but before we lay down the rest of the paths we need to lay in ducting for a new electricity and water supply. For this we need to clear a path around the inner perimeter of the Walled Garden. Can you help?
On Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th August we are planning a weekend working party to clear a way for us to get a digger on site to put trenches in for the new electric and water supplies. The clearance work will involve removing the spoil “mountain” by the south gate (see photo below) so there will be quite a lot of digging, lifting and barrowing required. We are hoping to find some strong, fit people to help us out. Many hands make light work!
We would also welcome volunteers to take on some lighter tasks such as keeping a regular flow of refreshments available for the grafters and hoeing out the spoil.
The working parties will run from 10.00 – 13.00 hrs and 13.00 – 16.00 hrs Sat and Sun. Please contact us on info.lgh.garden@gmail.com if you would like to come along. You will need to bring suitable footwear with covered toes (no sandals), sunscreen and a hat if the weather is sunny. Free refreshments will be provided.
Thank you.
Our Summer 2018 newsletter is out now and can be downloaded at this link:
In this issue:
