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North West
Regional Report
Welcome to our new members...
Alexandra Road Allotments Association Altham Livingston Road Allotments Association
Cawdor Street Allotment Association Havannah Lane Allot Association Recreation Street Allotments Association Sutton Parish Council
Altham Parish Council 3 Individual Members
Can I just start by welcoming our new members to the region who have joined the National Society over the last quarter; it’s great to see more and more sites and members joining us. We hope that we will see you at our regional meetings and send us information from your sites, as well as making use of your regional rep, John Irwin, for all those ‘not too sure’ questions you have.
Well, hopefully by the time you read
this edition, the weather has become a
lot warmer and we are all busy outside on our allotments. Over the last few months the waterlogging on allotments across the region has been disheartening from what a lot of you have said. Lack of opportunities to winter dig and just not being able to
get on your plot has been the biggest problem, until of course we got to the end of February when the snow affected most of the country in varying depths. Then, to add injury to us, storm Emma came along at the back of the snow and sadly, not only did damage to structures and buildings, but those of us, who were a little advanced on sowing, found the wind and frost had gotten into our greenhouses and had a little nibble of our baby plants. However, we still have time to rescue and plant some more.
Across the region I hear that the various Potato Days went well and were busier than last year. What great
community events these
from our new style newsletters which are sleeker and more to the point. As always, we need your stories and forthcoming events to pass out to our members.
some reminders for the coming months. We have had several enquiries regarding
running workshop sessions similar to a couple of years ago on self-management, funding, community inclusion. We are, therefore, trying to gauge who will be interested and what areas so that we can source a venue within travel distance for members. If your site has any interest or wants a workshop on a different subject please let us know and we will see what resources are out there. This could be a good opportunity to upskill our groups and allotment sites; talking of which, has your site registered for the excellent offer of member to member insurance recently offered by the National Allotment Society? This is a great member benefit. I respect there is some work for some sites to do
in gathering all the required information, and some sites will already have that to hand, but please seriously consider this benefit; after all it is of no cost to you – just remember you still need to cover third party liability for the site itself; this is not a replacement but an additional benefit. I’m sure there will be many questions coming our way at our regional meetings in the coming months.
We hope you have registered your interest to attend the National AGM
on the 2nd June at Wyboston Lakes Bedfordshire. The agenda and workshop events look like a great couple of days and for those of you unable to attend we shall be doing a regional report. I must admit I am not looking forward to the drive down, but it’s great to meet up with some wonderful people and very dear friends in the movement, so it does make the effort worthwhile.
Just before I go can I please remind
you that our new email address is nwcallotmentassociations@gmail.com and our website is http://northwestallotments. btck.co.uk.
If, for any reason, you have not received our new style newsletters and wish to be added, please drop me an email indicating your permission to add you, your name and allotment association details.
Well, I suppose there’s still loads more to chat about but I’m going to give you
a chance to read the magazine in detail and close by saying a sincere thank
you to those loyal supporters over the last few months. Your comments and encouragement are appreciated by all the Executive, and we wish you a great and healthy growing season.
Andy, Regional Secretary NW
can be; as well as earning
a little bit of revenue it
also helps us keep our
local companies going. Of
course, we still have Kings
Seeds offering a fantastic
supply of seed potatoes
as well as every other seed
and gadget you can think
of. It was great to hear our
friends from Skelmersdale
Federation on Radio
Lancashire talking to Stephen Lowe one Sunday morning on his outdoor country and gardening show. I must add that he has been getting soft the last few months and been broadcasting from a warm studio, but I’m sure he will be out among us in our allotments, community gardens, farmers markets and outdoor events in the coming months. If Stephen and our dear producer Shelly are at a location near you during the summer why not pop down and have a chat with them? As soon as you mention allotments or a brew and bacon butty he will soon have a chat with you as he’s an allotment plotholder himself so they tell me – but not sure too much on that.
Well, regionally we will have held our AGM in St Helens by the time you read this and I’m sure that there will be more
to report on that in edition 3. We still have some work to do getting our contact base back up and running properly but thank you for bearing with us; your feedback has been very encouraging and positive
Across the region I hear that the various Potato Days went well and were busier than last year. What great community events these can be
Currently we are working on Southport Flower Show where we are trying to encourage local Federations to own a
part of the show, create their own identity and build a small display to link into the whole stand. Early ideas but we hope that some more people will come on board and take up the challenge. Southport is one
of, if not the largest, independent Flower Show in the Region that we exhibit at. From the directors, staff, groundsmen and women, to all our great friends we have made from other exhibitors on site, we are really looking forward to this event in our calendar.
Again, this year we are lucky to continue with our sponsorship from J Mahers from Bolton who supply a lot of our allotment shops with lovely gardening goodies; Jon and his team are very professional and helpful. As part of their service they will unload your goods wherever you want them – within reason of course. Not many companies offer that service; it’s usually
dropped at the gate and left for you to move but not at Mahers! Jon, for
a number of years, has generously sponsored our North West Best Allotment Competition, which was created as a memorial to Dave Cartner from MCPC Ltd Systems. Those of us, who use their software Colony, will know how easy it makes managing an allotment
site. Margaret and the family are keen
to keep this competition going in Dave’s memory and always attend our presentation awards along with Alan Rowlands and
Jon Maher; of course we really appreciate this. Again we are running this competition across the North West allotments and it’s really very easy to enter. Please just write about your site in no more than 400 words explaining how it has improved, been
a centre of the community, opened the gates to children and families, helped local charities, improved health and wellbeing etc; whatever your good news story we want to hear about it. Also, please add 4 pictures showing the site in its glory. This is not a Judge Visit session so the more you capture in writing and photos the better. We want you to submit those to the secretary no later than 26th August. This will give you a good amount of time to get some great summer photos, maybe of an event, open day, celebration of funding for onsite work, toilet or cabin, so have a think and set
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