Where has 2014 gone, as we whizz towards Spring it has been lovely to walk around Gorse Hill and see the fruits of our labour. As I cast my mind back to a very cold and wet November day and a gang of us get covered in mud planting thousands of bulbs it’s great to see those bulbs bursting through.
I can see irises, daffodils and tulips bursting through at the foot of trees on South Lonsdale St, I can see the beginnings of Sweet Peas appearing on Milton Rd and some daffodils appearing along Chester Rd – even some on the sad looking central island near the junction with Talbot Rd. We’ve made a start and we’ll do more with our planting day at the end of March (check out our Spring Planting Day post).
For the Spring Planting Day we plan to weed and tidy up the tree pits adding some summer flowering bulbs and seeds, we’re going to tidy up the two planters that sit at the top of Taylor’s Rd and begin the planting at the two Gorse Hill monuments.
Gorgeous Gorse Hill is very much a marathon not a sprint and we have a long way to go; we hope that as we see improvements around the area more residents will get involved. But what do we mean by involvement, there’s lots of ways to be involved. You could come along to a planting day dig a small hole and pop a bulb in it, you could donate some strawberry plants for us to plant, you could come along and do some weeding. But there are other ways to be involved and make Gorse Hill gorgeous, you can pick up after your dog, you can pop your litter in bins, you can talk to your neighbours about what day to put their bins out, you can take your rubbish to the tip.
I know you’re seeing a theme emerging, but quite simply we can all do small things to make Gorse Hill gorgeous and together we will make our area better than before.
There’s exciting stuff happening in Stretford: we’ve got a community orchard that by the summer will be a beautiful place to have a picnic, we’ve got a community cafe that is every two weeks in the Gorse Hill church – run by volunteers, pay what you can afford (next date is 15th March) and the work at Stretford Public Hall is looking really exciting – more info here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/227083674131806/ as well as the Poo Busters who are trying to address the dog dirt issue one luminous poop at a time.
Gorse Hill is a great place to live and we have a chance to show everyone how much we love it, so come on people get involved and come along to the planting day.