We shall be participating in this event at our next volunteering day – Sunday 26th January from 11:00-13:00. If you want to take part, just turn up on the morning. Further details can be found on the official site here:
https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch
or for a spotting sheet, see this file:
Full details are below, but broadly, we are hoping you can send us your photographs of the Gardens. There are no prizes, but you should be able to see your photograph displayed in various locations. There are two categories – one for adults, and the other for our junior members.
The committee has been working on plans for the future of the Gardens. These can be viewed on the attached file. Our intent is to try and secure some grants from local community funding to help us to realise them. We will still need your help to help us to achieve these plans so we can maintain and develop the Gardens as a thing of beauty for the whole community to continue to enjoy for many years to come, so please feel free to volunteer anything you can contribute.
A new Chair, a reinvigorated committee with new plans and …
noted local naturalist Joe Beale on his recent survey of the birds and bugs of Mycenae Gardens
The arrival of new members to the committee has given the group new energy and a new Chair, Stewart Williams, as well as many ideas for the future, to restore and improve the Gardens for the local community and for wildlife. Come and hear about those plans, and to hear from Joe Beale about the survey he carried out in May this year, a survey commissioned to help the group and the council make plans that would encourage wildlife as well as improve the Gardens for users.
Come and join us on Monday 30 October 2023 6:45 for 7pm
in the Waldorf (Steiner) School Hall
We are very happy to announce
that Joe Beale’s ecologist survey has been finalized and is now available to the public.
The weather was kind to us …
and we had a useful number of energetic volunteers from the Friends (and their families) and from the athletes of GoodGym (https://www.goodgym.org/reports/weaving-our-magic)
Some much-needed pruning produced cuttings that were used to reinforce the dead hedging.
Three new birdboxes were put up in the wildlife area
Meanwhile a different team (fortified with cupcakes and flapjacks) restored one of the willow barriers.
A few bulbs still survive within this bed, but we plan to plant more later, if the barrier lasts longer than the last ones …
Saturday 11 March 10:30am to 1pm
Please come and help set up the gardens for the season! We shall be gathering on Saturday 11 March to carry out some pruning, repair of the dead hedging, and (if we can get hold of the materials) repair of the willow barriers around two of the shrub beds.
Come to help or come to chat. Bring gloves, plus secateurs and/or loppers (if you have them). Biscuits provided.
I have failed to provide an update to the rather gloomy post of 23 September last.
After various twists the AGM was eventually held on 18 October 2022. A number of members were elected to the committee which now comprises:
Bruce Atherton (Liaison)
Mark Barnes (Chair)
Fiona Machen (Joint Secretary)
Anne Robbins
Vera Shuvueva-Becar
Virginia Williams (Treasurer)
Stewart Williams (Joint Secretary)
Mark Johnson-Brown (nominated by Mycenae House)
Rita Sesay (nominated by The Greenwich Steiner School)
The new members bring a welcome and much needed portfolio of new skills and ideas.
One of those ideas was to conduct a survey of members and other users of the gardens, to ascertain more accurately what the local community needs from the gardens, and how best it can be delivered. That questionnaire is available at https://bit.ly/fomg-q1. Paper copies will also be available in Mycenae House. Please fill it in, and let us hear your views and ideas.
Meanwhile, we have also been busy with more hands-on matters. After a pruning day in October, and some woodchip spreading in November, we have a ‘winter action day’ on Saturday 11 March 10:30am – 1pm, when we hope to tidy up, carry out some pruning, repair the dead hedging and possibly reconstruct the willow barriers (if we can source the materials). Please come along, to help or just to chat. Many hands make light work – and a party …
Mark Barnes
| Dear Friends, Neighbours, Users of Mycenae Gardens, As all too few of you will know, the AGM on 13 September was so poorly attended that it was inquorate. It has been adjourned to Tuesday 18 October at 6:30 pm in The Greenwich Steiner School. If that meeting too is inquorate or too few come forward to join the committee, the group will have to be dissolved. A special general meeting to dissolve the group has therefore been called for the same date, time and place. See the notice below. No quorum is required for that dissolution meeting: the matter will be decided by a simple majority of those present. There will be an article about this in the Westcombe News at the beginning of October, and I shall send out an email to the membership on the subject of those meetings at about the same time. MEANWHILE and in what may be our final gift to the gardens, we invite you all to a morning of light work in the gardens on Saturday 15 October 10:30 – 1pm. The work will be directed by Fiona Machen, and will probably concentrate on pruning, repairing the dead hedging and clearing up. Last year’s event attracted a good number of adults and children and was a very enjoyable sociable occasion that achieved good results, particularly on the beech hedge at the back of the school. We hope for fair weather and as good a time this year. Mark Barnes Chair, Secretary of the Friends of Mycenae Gardens ……………… Notice of a Special General Meeting of the Friends of Mycenae Gardens (‘the Group’) to be held immediately after the adjourned Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 18 October 2022 at 6:30 pm in the Greenwich Steiner School to discuss the dissolution of the Group |
So did you spot the Black Walnut?
… or the Weeping Pear?
Friday 6 May was a fine day for a Tree Party. We were celebrating the variety of trees in what I shall continue to call the Mycenae Arboretum. Rich Sylvester (@richstories) was there to lead the festivities, and soon had a tribe of small children following him, many of whom turned out to be quite knowledgeable young dendrophiles.
Thirty five different species of tree have been labelled (with much appreciated advice and help from Greenwich Tree Officers). One or two trees are still to be labelled. But if you spot a species that you think should be labelled, please let us know.
Friends of Mycenae Gardens 