Preserving our park for future generations FRIENDS OF www.ruskinpark.co.uk rusQUARTERLY FREE NEWSLETTERkin | SPRING 2011 | [email protected] parkparklifelife Spring has finally sprung! IN THIS ISSUE: Enjoy our special Chair’s update membership and Community Garden volunteering Ruskiniana The BIG Draw edition. Your Membership renewal donations make a 10 year tree plan real difference. And much more... Join us on Facebook friendsofruskinpark Photo by David Ferguson BECOME A FRIEND AND HELP OUR PARK | VOLUNTEER AND GET INVOLVED Photo by John Steedman Chair’sChair’s reportreport by Doug Gillies ThisThis springspring issueissue isis aa biggerbigger membershipmembership andand volunteervolunteer specialspecial edition.edition. PleasePlease renewrenew youryour membershipmembership toto helphelp supportsupport youryour parkpark throughthrough whatwhat looklook likelike toughtough financialfinancial timestimes ahead.ahead. LambethLambeth CouncilCouncil setset theirtheir budgetbudget inin FebruaryFebruary withwith reducedreduced fundingfunding forfor parksparks acrossacross thethe borough.borough. IN THE PARK... This will mean cuts to services, important now for organising including no longer funding the events and activities. For example, • We have secured funding from landfill tax to plant Park Rangers, who help reduce in the absence of the Park the old bowling green original design including the crime and arranged events in many Rangers, who have organised for two herbaceous borders. of the borough’s parks including several years the popular Egg Hunt • The rose beds will be replanted shortly, funded by the Ruskin Park. This is a serious blow at Easter time, we will need Ward Purse 2009. and will undoubtedly leave a gap, additional volunteers, otherwise which Friends groups and Safer that event will not happen. • Network Rail did some maintenance that needed Neighbourhood teams, the latter Volunteers are also needed to access to the park. They made a donation of £500 as themselves under funding assist the Committee to plan and a thank you. pressures, cannot fill alone. hold other events like the annual summer fete. We would like to do • Green Flag 2011 preparations begin. The Lambeth Parks and more, as London offers a lot more Greenspaces Forum, which I initiatives, but will only be able to • We received 50 free small trees (saplings), which were attend, held meetings with Byron if more people volunteer. planted on the February volunteer morning. Miller, interim Head of Parks and Renewing your current or lapsed Councillor Nosegbe, responsible membership or joining the Friends for parks, to discuss the budget for the first time will this year implications. Making savings of entitle you to a new Membership £650,000 on the Veolia park Pack. See the feature on page 5 to maintenance contract could mean was given. However, from our own calendar competition. A few join us and make a difference. reducing the numbers of staff, or funds and generous donations, we remaining calendars are still staff time in the park so they cover Thank you to those of you who have been able to purchase four available at the reduced price of only basic functions like clearing voted for the stable block as the new 6-foot benches, part of a £3.50 (was £5). Copies can be up litter and dog mess it may nomination for Lambeth’s Your range of garden furniture from ordered by contacting us at the mean a reduction in staff with Choice award in the £75,000 Verne Enterprises, Her Majesty’s usual email address. horticultural expertise and making category for money for repairs. Prison Service, The Verne in Dorset. staff more mobile between parks. Sadly, ours was not the winning bid. These benches have been built Final decisions have not yet been and finished by prisoners as part We have been working We now need help from anyone with made on all aspects of the plans, of a rehabilitation scheme that hard over the winter to successful experience of sourcing or but we all will have to work within aims to help equip offenders with completing funding applications to bring you a Ruskin these new constraints to make the practical skills, productive assist us to find funds to repair the Park website at best of the situation, working with occupation and experience that stable block. So if you have these www.ruskinpark.co.uk Lambeth Council and doing what could, in turn, lead on to their skills please get in touch. which will be ready soon. we can in the park to assist. future employment and help We will also be reviewing We requested replacement park prevent reoffending. It is your park too and we need the management and benches around the old bowling your help. Volunteering is essential For the first time we have green from the local Councillor’s tree plans for the park. to enable the Friends to operate produced a Ruskin Views Calendar Ward Purse 2010, but no funding and care for the park. This is so 2011 from pictures sent to the A buzzy partnership by Robert Tunmore A partnership between South West London and The Maudsley The Ruskin Park Community known as it gives people an NHS Trust (SLAM), The Ruskin Park Community Garden Project Garden aims to educate and opportunity to be close to the involve the local community cycle of nature and reap the fruit and The Friends of Ruskin Park has secured funding to set up a around sustainable planting with of their labour. As this is a ‘nectar bar’, a project to involve service users from SLAM. a focus on growing vegetables community garden, service users and taking care of the who participate in the group will SLAM Members’ Council’s Bids Community Link Centre said: environment. The space in Ruskin be joining a thriving community Scheme ‘Make me Smile Again’ “This is great news. Service users Park, opposite the Maudsley organisation in which they can awarded the maximum amount from the Community Link Centre hospital, is ideally suitable for a become more widely involved as of £750 for the scheme. have been asking for a gardening weekly group for both in-patients they recover. The nectar bar will include a group at the Centre. Now they and out-patients. www.slam.nhs.uk/ range of wild flowers that will will benefit from the project by The aim is to plant a ‘nectar bar’ wellbeing-garden.aspx attract beneficial insects such as being involved in therapeutic in spring 2011. The therapeutic honey bees and butterflies which gardening within a supportive benefits of gardening are well- will also improve pollination of community setting. It will mean plants all over the park. The getting some exercise and fresh project will also include hedging air, learning new skills and for wildlife, with a range of native gaining confidence. Being part of plants such as Hazel, Hawthorn, the Ruskin Park Community Wild Privet, Dog Rose, Crab Apple Garden project will help with and Blackberry. These will attract social engagement too, our other insects, and their fruits and service users will be encouraged seeds will provide food for the to take an active part in the wild bird population in the park. planning and documenting of the project. All these things are Inet Strydom, Activities Co- important for good mental health ordinator at South London and and wellbeing.” Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust Photo by Doug Gillies Ruskin Park Community Garden A volunteer has created a detailed dressings, grated beetroot, fried planting plan that involves a four green tomatoes. Everyone brought a year crop rotation with some dish of something local to share as companion planting. We are going to well. We put our new picnic tables to grow a broad range of vegetables, good use in a fitting celebration of including some of the trickier ones what we’ve achieved. like celery. In February we had a seed In November we planted the fruit planting day, with volunteers taking beds – raspberries, gooseberries, red, home the seed containers to grow on white and black currants and rhubarb. windowsills until they’re ready to go into the ground. We held an introduction to permaculture day in December and We are very excited to be getting a used permaculture principles to beehive this spring. We have a group design the wildlife area. Patients of volunteers who have been taking from the Maudsley Hospital will help beekeeping courses and a mentor with planting up the area, which will with decades of beekeeping include hedging and wildflowers. The experience. Our purpose in keeping Maudsley won a grant to fund the bees is helping the bees to survive; planting, with help from us and gathering honey will only be done if Robert Tunmore from the Friends of there’s excess. by Therese Stowell Ruskin Park. We celebrated the harvest with a For information on dig days, please feast in September. We cooked and visit the web site After a productive autumn and a fairly ate what we grew: potato, green www.ruskinparkcommunity bean, sugar snap pea and beetroot quiet winter, we are looking forward to garden.org. green salad with mint, roasted spring at the community garden. squash with three different Most local people will know that Ruskin Park is named after John Ruskin, the grounds and gardens of his former home making up part of Ruskin Park as we know it. He was born on Feb 8th 1819 and moved to the area when he was 4 years old. Ruskiniana by Robert Tunmore No.28 Herne Hill The landscape must have gardens front and rear, well looked very different in his day. stocked with fruit and flowers – W G Collingwood writes in his quite an Eden for a little boy, and biography “The Life of all the more that the fruit of it John Ruskin”: was forbidden…..” “In the next year (1823) they Later Collingwood describes how quitted the town for a suburban as a young man in his 20s ’John home.