Fodm Autumn Newsletter 2005

SPACE TO PLAY EVERYONE NEEDS IT

Autumn Newsletter 2005

Richard Briers and Children from Cavendish Primary School

FoDM Newsletter

Autumn 2005

The community garden is growing in beauty as the plants we put in last year mature. We had our first small crop of grapes from the vine we planted, they were surprisingly sweet and by next year the vine should have completely covered the pergola. We also had a good crop of apples. A number of groups, including some of the local young people and the DMCA Bingo club used the garden for BBQ’s, we are hoping that even more people will use it next year. Members are growing produce in the veg plots, but one is free if anyone would like to take it on. This is the perfect time to start putting in winter crops and preparing for next spring. Give me a call if you would like a veg plot or just a key so that you can enjoy the garden.

The water play area is moving ahead, although, frustratingly, there have been a few delays, beyond our control. Construction should start in Feb next year and the play area should be finished by the beginning of July. We are grateful to all the funders who have made this possible, The London Marathon Trust, Living Spaces, Garfield Weston Foundation, Brett Trust, Hounslow Council, from their central resources and through the Chiswick Area Committee and Stanhope PLC who have recently offered to pay half the cost of the landscaping, £11,000.

Unfortunately we will not be able to make the planned improvements to Promenade Approach at this stage, as the funds we were hoping to use for this have had to be put towards the water play area. This is due to unforeseen additional work due to our discovering that there is no foul water connection from the area, the old toilets empty into a cesspit. We will be cleaning and sweeping the Approach, however and cutting back the base shoots around the trees that are blocking the path. Bovis Lend Lease is providing volunteers to help with this as part of their annual employees volunteering programme.

As you will see we have adopted a now logo, that we hope gives a better idea of what we are trying to achieve on Dukes Meadows and will give us a broad appeal. The Band Stand was great for identifying us locally, but was confusing to people who didn’t know the area.

We were very pleased to be highly commended in the prestigious Charity Awards 2005. The awards recognise excellence in management, other organisations recognised included BTCV and The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust. These are obviously much larger organisations than us and it is a great compliment to be in such illustrious company

Friends of Dukes Meadows Autumn Newsletter 2005

The Orchard

The trees in the orchard are mostly doing well, we lost a few of the whips on the north side of the Plateau, which is more of a thoroughfare, but almost all those on the south side are thriving. We will be planting more whips this autumn to fill in the gaps. Due to the exceptionally dry summer the trees needed a lot of care, we watered the large trees every two to three days. We ran an “adopt a tree campaign” for the whips, which was very successful around 50 people, have offered to look after a whip. If you would like to adopt a tree, but haven’t yet please give us call. We will put a label, bearing your name, on your chosen tree and you can keep an eye on it and water it next summer if we have another dry year.

Membership

Children from Cavendish Primary School

Help Plant the orchard with help from local actor Richard Briers

We are keen to increase our membership from the current 280. This would give us greater lobbying power to gain more funding for Dukes Meadows. I am enclosing one of our membership forms please pass it to anyone you know who might want to join. Please call me if you would like any more forms

The Band Stand

Martin Hargreaves a Civil & Structural Engineer has inspected the Band Stand and devised a scheme of repair. We are now seeking builders to visit and quote for doing the work. Once we have these quotes we will start applying for grants to cover the cost of getting the work done. We are grateful to the Council who are funding Martins work.

We were recently successful in an application to Bridge House Trust who have provided £10,000 to support our Development manager post for a further year, the balance of the cost of the post will be paid for from our own income. Brett Trust have also pledged a further £15,000 towards the cost of the water play area and we are very grateful to them for their continued support.

Membership Drive – We have just launched our first membership drive and are very grateful to Richard Briers who has helped us promote it. We have 260 members at the moment, but have a target of 1000 that we are hoping to achieve by this time next year. A high membership would give us much more lobbying power. We have produced an attractive membership flyer, with our new branding, that will be delivered to 12,000 homes across Chiswick from the river up to the High Road

Dates for your diary

Following on from the success and popularity of last year’s bonfire party we will be holding another this year on Friday 4th November. It will be in the same place, in front of the Bowls Club, where the market is held starting at 7pm with the fireworks let off around 7.30. We will be selling hamburgers and hot dogs, there will be apple bobbing for children and the Bowls Club bar will be open. We will need volunteers to help out so please get in touch if you can. Please don’t bring any fireworks or sparklers to the event.

Our bi weekly volunteer days continue the next will be Sunday 30th October, we always meet at the Dukes Meadows Community Centre car park at 11am. We send out an email reminder in the week before each event. If you would like to re advise us if your email address please send it to kathleen@fodm.org.uk with the heading “please update my email address

Can you help ?

Fundraising sub committee – We have been successful in raising grants for projects, but have not done a great deal of fundraising through events. This is mainly due to having a great deal else happening and not, therefore having people free to focus on this. We would like to establish a separate fundraising committee so if you have experience in this or would like to gain some please get in touch on tel No 020 8742 2225 or email from the contacts page.