Volunteer Workday on Saturday 15 March

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Bonnington Square Garden Needs You

Please come and help out at the volunteer workday on Saturday 15 March from lO am. No gardening knowledge is needed, just your enthusiasm. Bonnington Square Garden is nearly 20 years old and needs you to get involved to keep it going.

Who looks after the garden?

• The garden is maintained by the residents of the area through the Bonnington Square Garden Association (BSGA).
• The association is open for anyone to join.
• The BSGA pay the bills for running of the garden (water, electricity, repairing damaged and worn out bits of the garden, replacing plants etc) and organise garden workdays and events in the garden.
• Currently only a small group of residents volunteer their time and effort to look after the garden and get involved in the running of the garden by being members of BSGA.

The BSGA receive no ongoing funding from any source for the garden. Lambeth Council does not give any money to the garden.

Who looks after the planted areas around the square?

As well as the garden the planted areas in the street also need to be cared for, they need weeding, managing plant growth and watering etc. This is what it looked like before the street plots!

To make sure all the areas are being cared for we would like to get a list of people that look after different parts of the square.

  • If you already look after an area, thank you and a can you email us so we know?
  • If you want to look after an area can you email us and say which area? Please email us at [email protected]

We desperately need more people to become involved in the garden. There are many ways you can help:

  • Give your time – Do a bit of gardening on our volunteer workdays (next one is Saturday 15th March) no gardening knowledge needed. Help out at garden events.
  • Fundraising – Help with ideas on raising money; offer to donate things to sell such as baking cakes for garden events.
  • Donate – If you can’t give your time you can donate money or items which we need e.g. a new picnic table or tool storage box, garden hose etc.
  • IT/Web skill – we need help keeping a website about the garden up-to-date.
  • Ideas – get involved with thinking how the garden should be used and designed.The garden is running out of money- The garden costs about 1000 a year just to maintain and when we have to repair vandalism or replace plants this cost goes up. Last year we only received £168 in donations.

    If you would like to make a donation please make cheques payable to: Bonnington Square Garden Association and send to: BSGA Treasurer, 52 Bonnington Square.

A bit of history
In 1990 a builder working in the area applied to the Council to use the site of the garden for storage. The Bonnington Square Garden Association was formed by Local Residents to lay claim to the “wasteland”. Construction began in August 1994 transforming the land into a little slice of paradise that improves all our lives and is an inspiration to other communities that want to do the same.

Get involved in your garden

Get in contact: email bonnington-square-gardens©googlegroups.com

Keybridge House planning meeting

Vauxhall Park

The Keybridge House planning meeting has unexpectedly been scheduled for Tuesday 28 January, 7pm at Lambeth Town Hall. The main concerns are that the provision of a primary school on the site (without proper play space) instead of social/affordable housing would be bad news for locals in basic housing need, Vauxhall Park and the new school’s future pupils. Plus, Lambeth seems to be unwilling to satisfy a FoI request from Friends of Vauxhall Park regarding the viability of the development, which the developer claims is reducing the scope for social/affordable housing.

It would be really helpful to have as many people as possible attend the planning meeting in support of objectors (limited to three) who are permitted to speak for just two minutes each.

For details for the meeting, please go to Vauxhall Spring on www.vivavauxhall.com or click on the link below, which will take you to the home page & events calendar of the KOV Forum.
http://www.kovforum.org

Invitation

AGM, Event, Gardening

The Bonnington Square Garden Association

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Invites all to the AGM

Wednesday 29th January 2014

7pm

@ The Bonnington Centre

Agenda:

Election of Officers/Executive Committee

Officer’s Reports

Next workday

Planting Plans/Trees

Any other Business

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Also

Big Garden Clean-Up Day

Weekend 15/16 March

from 10.30am

All help greatly appreciated!

 

Where’s the politico who’ll wave the flag for Vauxhall Park? | The Vauxhall Society

press, Vauxhall Park
Friends of Vauxhall Park
Friends of Vauxhall Park

Councillor Sally Prentice will raise a Green Flag in Vauxhall Park at 11am on Saturday 7 December. Might a more appropriate pennant be white, denoting Lambeth councillors’ surrender of this public park to private privilege and wealth? Cllr Prentice is Lambeth’s ‘Cabinet’ member for Culture and Leisure, and the Green Flag is the latest award from Keep Britain Tidy for helping make the Vauxhall Park one of the best green spaces in the country.Lambeth councillors have given way time and time again on planning applications for silos in which to store students or for skyscraper apartment blocks in which to stack the rich.These buildings will shade Vauxhall Park , while their gardenless inhabitants will overcrowd it and stamp flat the park’s green spaces. Now, to add insult to injury, councillors are diverting to other uses the community benefit payments from these developments that The Friends of Vauxhall Park were expecting.

via Where’s the politico who’ll wave the flag for Vauxhall Park? | The Vauxhall Society.

Make Vauxhall safer for pedestrians and cyclists: Change the gyratory! – PetitionBuzz

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London Local Assembly Member, Val Shawcross and your local Labour Councillors are calling for Transport for London and Boris Johnson to join Lambeth Council into committing to changing the Vauxhall Gyratory so it is safer for pedestrians and cyclists to use.

We the undersigned join in the call for the Vauxhall gyratory to be changed so it’s safer for local residents and fit for purpose in an increasingly residential area.

via Make Vauxhall safer for pedestrians and cyclists: Change the gyratory! – PetitionBuzz.

Lambeth Council Project Officer vacancy

Gardening

We are looking for two self-motivated project officers to deliver a series of environmental schemes within Lambeth’s Cultural Development Team, with projects range from new parks and green links at the New Vauxhall on the South Bank developments to semi-rural and heritage works at some of our key heritage sites and commons. This will include both new sports and play equipment at certain sites.

These posts work closely with the Cultural Development Management and local friends groups to achieve high quality development and landscape impacts to meet the needs of our diverse community.

The post holders will have responsibility for managing and delivering all aspects of the project from inception to practical completion. Applicants will require a degree in Landscape Architecture or have a further education qualification in an environmental, regeneration with a sound background of planning design and landscape management.

Good project management and negotiation skills are essential, plus a working understanding of Local Authority procurement. Excellent communication skills are required as a considerable amount of community engagement will be involved.

For further information please contact – Jeff Raggett – [email protected]

via Current vacancies | Lambeth Council.

Seek out relief in Bonnington Square Garden, a ragtag oasis

Open Gardens

It’s easy to miss such gardens amid London’s sensory overload, even for locals living in their easy reach. London’s Vauxhall neighborhood, for instance, is full of rollicking after-hours clubs and traffic-choked streets and bridges. Seek out relief in Bonnington Square Garden, a ragtag oasis of trees, vines, and flowering shrubs in a closed-off square of Victorian townhouses. This is a true diamond in the rough. Known in the 1970s as a warren for hippies and squatters, Bonnington Square reflects its eccentric past, planted as it is with a tangle of mimosa, beech, and mulberry trees as well as lavender, giant ferns, low-growing palms—and the appropriately vegan Bonnington Café.

via London’s Secret Gardens | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine.