Spondon in Bloom 2009

Christmas shop window competition

Spondon Traders’ Association launched Christmas in style on Friday 27^th November with a late shopping evening and the official switch-on of the lights. Customers thronged the shops, enjoying the nibbles and drinks, starting their Christmas shopping early. They were also entertained by the choir “Mixed Blessings” and handbell ringing (pictured here) from the Scouts.

The local shops have also thrown themselves into the annual “Christmas shop window” competition run by the Village Improvement Committee. The judges this year were a group of 20 from our local Guide troop, led by Karen Battelle - and very difficult job they had!

After much deliberation the first prize was awarded to Housley's Chemists, with Burlington Travel gaining second place, Squeaks and Beaks a creditable third.

Congratulations to the STA for making the village centre look really festive!

Get voting for us!

As you can read lower down the page, we are still working on our long term plans to refurbish Dale Road Park. There has been some good news on this, as the "tactile toposcope" has been selected by Rolls Royce apprentices as one of their design projects. They are working with us during 2010.

Further good news is that Derby City Pond Wardens Association have gained a sizeable grant to work on the ponds around the city and we will be lobbying for the pond at Dale Road Park to be high on their priority list!

Bovril are offering a prize of £20,000 as part of their "Revive the great outdoors" campaign. We have nominated our refurbishment of Dale Road Park as one of their projects. The online voting stage is now closed, we succeeded in getting on the shortlist, and we now await the judge's decision! You can still see how the competition is doing by going to their website or just click on our poster shown here.

Bluebells success

Congratulations to Bluebells dairy for making it to the shortlist for the BBC Food & Farming Awards in the "Farmer of the Year" category. Although they were pipped at the post, this is a wonderful result after only a year of operation. Rosemary Brown was pleased: "We didn’t win our category, but had the opportunity to distribute our pots of ice cream during the luncheon and have photos of celebs such as Raymond Blanc eating bluebells ice cream – something we would never ever have dreamed of a year ago!"

Spondon is lucky to have such an enterprise that also plays an active role in the community and teh Community Association is grateful for their support.

Done it again!

Spondon's re-entry to the East Midlands in Bloom competition saw us once again take the award for Urban Community category, with a silver gilt certificate. This was reported in the Derby Evening Telegraph. Once again, the judges were particularly impressed with the community involvement. Click here for the full report. Pictured here are Margaret Kelley (VIC chair) and Ed Spencer receiving the award.

The following article appeared in the October SCAN:

Spondon triumphs again!

Well, we were always told not to blow our own trumpet, but is difficult not to be just somewhat pleased that our re-entry to the East Midlands in Bloom competition also marked our return to victory!

In 2008, the Village Improvement Committee decided that we should take a well-earned break from the competition after 4 years, but the decision was greeted with disappointment from many residents - and the judges! So, in 2009, we bowed to the inevitable and girded our loins. Perhaps the gap did us good, because our usual high level of support seemed to increase, not only from Spondon but also the help we got from the City Council.

As ever, the choice of route was difficult - there is so much to show off in Spondon and we are only allowed 2 hours of the judges’ time. Much to our regret, we felt we could not include “southern Spondon”, which has so much to show off. Even using a car, we realised we would lose some 20 minutes (nearly 10% of our allotted time) just in getting them to and from the area.

We started the judges with a “bribe” - coffee and wonderful cakes at Bluebells; our thanks to Rosemary Brown for opening up specially for us on a Tuesday. From there, we took them to the Cricket Club (a surprise advantage, as one of the judges turned out to be an ex-groundsman!) and our usual star attraction of the Waste Fields allotments (which got a special “judge’s award for excellence).

We decided to show them some of the “behind the scenes” work, taking them to the garden of Trish and Jack Paton and the VIC polytunnel (thanks to the Neighbourhood Board for funding a replacement this year), where all our plants are nurtured to full bloom. Then on to another new “exhibit”, showing them the efforts of the pupils at Borrow Wood School.

All this early section had been done by car, but we then took them to the Village Hall site to complete the tour on foot, our “standard” route, through the Sensory Garden to the Nature Reserve. On the way, they met some local residents (pictured here) and judged the Hardware Shop and the Village Club as entries for judge’s awards in their own categories.

A separate competition, but still part of East Midlands in Bloom invites schools to submit pupils’ pictures. West Park School entered this and walked off with 3 prizes! Hannah Brown in 8P won third prize; second prize went to Charlie Davies and Chloe Bunting in 8E was awarded first prize for the picture shown here. Well done to them all - more details in the school newsletter.

Our thanks to all those who contributed, either on the day or “behind the scenes”, not forgetting everybody on the route who made a special effort with their front gardens (and also to West Park School for printing the leaflets we distributed all along the route!). We’ve always had good support from the City Council Parks Department, but this year they seemed to pull out all the stops! (We presume they provided just as much help to Littleover, entering for the first time - congratulations to them for gaining a creditable silver award.)
We have to wait until October to hear whether we have been entered for next year’s Britain in Bloom competition.

SCAN articles

This article appeared in the December 2009 edition of SCAN.

From our victory in the East Midlands we now move on to planning our Britain in Bloom entry for next year. I can assure you that this is being organised like a military campaign, I almost feel we have to line up for inspection at the beginning of each meeting. Our first strategic planning session(!) is shown here. So far, we have looked at where we lost marks in this year’s judges’ report to see how we can improve in the future.
We were only a few marks short of a ‘gold’ score and hope that the extra attention to detail in 2010 will move us up into this category. One of the East Midlands judges agreed to come along and give us some pointers as to how this could be achieved. We have had a meeting with City Council officers who will do all they can to support of our efforts. We have contacted other officers, such as Street Cleaning, to ask for their help next year.

Our Awards evening in November brought together 72 people who helped us to win this year, either with practical or financial support. We also presented certificates to the winners of our various competitions - Ann Smith (best planter), the Malt Shovel (pubs and clubs) and Spondon Hardware (business premises). We were very pleased when two our audience volunteered to join the VIC committee.

We have been reporting on our long-term plans for Dale Road Park and we have some good news on that front. Firstly, you may recall that the pond there is infested with a nasty weed, called Crassula. Derby City Pond Wardens Association (which includes Mike Bardill for Dale Road Park and VIC member Clark Field for West Park Nature Reserve) have secured substantial funding for a major programme dealing with many of the City’s ponds. They have selected Dale Road Park pond for a complete makeover which should eradicate the dreaded weed, without harming the wildlife and this is one of their first projects.

Secondly, the VIC has got funding to engage Groundwork Derbyshire to carry out an initial design study, which will include public consultation on what should be incorporated in any new works. Half of the required money has been provided by the City Council Parks Department (who believe it will be of value to them as well) and the remainder has been provided as part of a grant from the Neighbourhood Board.

One element which we know we want to include is a “tactile toposcope” (that is, one that will be accessible for those with visual disabilities). This project has been selected as a design project by a team of Rolls Royce apprentices. This will take place over the next 12 months and will give updates in SCAN and on the SCA website. This is a tremendous boost to our plans and will add a “prestige touch” to the Park. We are very grateful to Rolls Royce for this support.

Once we get out of the design phase, we will need to find substantial sums of money to implement the proposals - that’s why it’s a long term project! This is where you come in…We have entered Dale Road Park in the Bovril “Revive the great outdoors” competition. If we win, we could get £20,000 to fund the refurbishment. To stand a chance we need to be in the “Top 100” entries for online votes, which you can do by clicking here. And, no, you don’t need to buy any Bovril to vote! Judging for our category will be at the end of February 2010.

The grant from the Neighbourhood Board (mentioned above) added a total of £3,000 to our funds, for which we are very grateful. As well as getting the Dale Road Park study launched, this will also pay for the Council’s provision and maintenance of the lamp-post planters in Sitwell Street and Chapel Street. £500 of the grant will be used to extend the surfaced footpath at the pond in West Park Meadows Nature Reserve, which we started last year. The grant also included a contribution of £300 to the costs of planting throughout the year (which costs us around £2000 each year).

With all this work looming, we have decided not to enter the East Midlands part of the competition next year; this means that we can put all our efforts in to that day of judging in early August. Although, of course, the people of Spondon will feel the benefits of our work all year round. Again, “watch this space”, as we keep you updated with our plans and (of course!) how you can help.

Anita Hayes

Parks in Spondon

It is well over a year since the Village Improvement Committee started its survey of the parks and recreation grounds in Spondon, prompted by a concern that provision in our area needed improvement. A survey of all the parks was undertaken, including an inventory of play equipment. As we suspected, play provision is very poor, especially for the over-5’s. We presented our findings to the City Council Parks Department and although not much seemed to happen immediately, we were very pleased at the suggestion at the March Neighbourhood Forum that the playground at Sandringham Drive (near Borrow Wood School) might be on the improvement list.

The VIC’s longer term plans are concentrating on Dale Road Park (find it on Google Maps here) which has two football pitches (with changing rooms) and a problematic pond but little else and has much more potential. The view from here on a clear day is amazing including the airport and Breedon-on-the Hill and (albeit requiring a good telescope!) Belvoir Castle. It also represents a “gateway” from Spondon to the countryside east of Spondon.

The problem with the pond is that has succumbed to Crassula, a virulent, invasive weed which requires complete eradication. We are working with the City Council and Derby Pond Wardens Association to come up with a viable solution, which will preserve the wildlife.

Ideas being considered include a toposcope (“a monument...which indicates the direction, and usually the distance, to notable landscape features which can be seen with the naked eye from that point”), trim trail and information boards as well as play equipment and even, possibly a bowls green. To fully implement this will need a considerable amount of money, and even getting a design together will need external funding, which the VIC is currently investigating.

Spondon bags

The new "2009 Spondon bags" are now available. The official launch took place on Monday 6^th April at Bluebell's farm shop, one of our new "bag venues" (as well as Crow Wood Farm Shop). Radio Derby were there and interviewed VIC members as well as Rosemary Brown from the farm shop; click here to listen (10Mb download)

The government, sensibly, used our event to launch their own ""get a bag habit" campaign, as reported in the Derby Evening Telegraph.

They are also available at Burlington Travel, Crafty Ways, D-Label Fashion, Housley's Pharmacy, Mark Davis, Plonkers, Price Wise, Romac Motor Factors, Shoe Stop, Spondon Hardware, Spondon Health & Leisure, Spondon News, Spondon Post Office, Squeaks and Beaks, Stems, The Meatloaf (all in the village centre) plus Dosanjh Store (Dale Road) and Kelly's Convenience Store (Edmund Road)

Check last year's "Spondon in Bloom" page for details of our continuing "mystery shopper" and "travel photo" competitions.

Stocks of bags are running low and we are unlikely to be ordering more. If you were thinking of getting one as a Christmas present, it may be wise to "shop early"!

Derbyshire Life

The April 2009 issue includes an excellent article on Spondon written by Ashley Franklin. It can be downloaded from here.

Ashley also took the excellent photographs, these and more can be viewed (and copies can be bought) here.