One of the wonderful John Shuttleworth’s creations pokes gentle fun at those of us who get involved in community activism. Community leader is not one that sits well with me, I see Gorgeous Gorse Hill as a team working to improve our area with the consensus and support of our fellow residents. One of my greatest fears is that our gorgeous vision is not one of the majority of the community.

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Wow we’ve been busy in Gorse Hill the past few weeks; we’ve certainly taken advantage of this glorious weather.

One of the most wonderful things that has happened is that the BT exchange boxes have been decorated – I’ve secretly been looking forward to this the most but it felt like we were waiting a lifetime for the designs to be signed off by BT. But now they are in place our marvellous artist Rob did such a good job interpreting Gorse Hill Scouts designs the boxes have really caused a buzz! (sorry)Here’s a taste of the designs but you can find them all on our new interactive map, the map has the locations of the boxes plus areas of planting – this map will continue to grow and develop as our work grows and develops. Continue reading →

Things are starting in Gorse Hill, meetings are being held, planters viewed, designs being designed and compost ordered!

We have our locations picked out that we will focus the Better Together funding on – these are in addition to the roller shutters that will be decorated.

You can see the locations, along with an ideas board to let you see what we are aiming for: Gorse_Hill_site_locations__LA1

Exciting times ahead – the next activity is for residents to come and view the local Gorse Hill Primary School pupils’ designs and cast your votes for your favourites – the winning designs will grace the roller shutters.

Here are the Top 15 winning designs – I hope you spot your favourite. There are some beauties. Thanks to Target Cafe for hosting the art show and the 39 wonderful Gorse Hillians who came out to vote. The designs will now be passed to Unity Arts to be developed ready for the shop owners to choose the one they want on their shutter.

What if? It’s a question that I have been thinking about a lot since our big win. Continue reading →

The clocks went forward last night and I woke bright and early – course I did – to what can only be described as a spring morning. A week ago a troop of hardy volunteers gathered to start tackling the extensive areas in Gorse Hill that can – and will – be planted. Continue reading →

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). Continue reading →

The last day of outdoor planting for the Gorgeous Gorse Hill gang started with hail; as the planned orchard planting day was a month further into winter and came two days after a huge storm I wasn’t feeling totally optimistic. But I was wrong. There it was the sun, no frozen ground – perfect tree planting weather.

The development of the community orchard has evolved through two Gorse Hill community projects – Gorgeous Gorse Hill and Project Buzz. Continue reading →

Well it’s December and the dark days and cold weather are no reason for to stop the onward march of gorgeousness in Gorse Hill. 

We’ve had some ups and downs since the last post. On the downside we were unsuccessful with one of our significant funding bids. This was funding towards the Street Art work on the shutters; it’s disappointing as this is a significant part of the project however it’s understandable with funding limited for community projects and charities you can understand funding decisions when you have to decide between projects that feed people and keep them well against a project that was to pretty up its local area. But that won’t put us off, we are waiting on the outcome of another funding application and we have found other sources of funding that we’re be exploring over the Festive period. Continue reading →

Hail. No one really likes hail. But hail is what we got when we began planting over 1000 bulbs last Sunday. A dedicated band of us braved the elements to plant a wide variety of spring bulbs around Gorse Hill. It’s funny although the weather was ghastly (and it was) everyone seemed very cheery and for me the thought of seeing tulips, daffodils, crocuses and irises poking through next spring was a good motivator.

Watch out for them, they’ve been put around the bases of trees on streets, along parts of Chester Rd (around bushes and trees) and at the top of Talbot Rd. Continue reading →

Southwark Greener, Cleaner, Safer Project with decorated Openreach boxes

A big part of the Gorgeous Gorse Hill project is our plan to brighten up shop shutters and telephone exchange boxes with ‘street art’. Some people have expressed concerns about how it will look – will they like it? Will it get vandalised? Will it just look like graffiti? Continue reading →