Tag Archives: gardens

Hoopla Garden

A garden under construction

A garden under construction

West Norwood is getting a garden  as part of the edible bus stop project on the route from Clapham Common to Crystal Palace  – see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C51FZ3zW6w

The Hoopla garden is being constructed in the pavement of Norwood Road, between Lancaster Avenue and Elmcourt Road . The design, drawn up in three community consultation events,  uses the existing bollards, with concrete rings over them, like a game of hoopla and  permeable paving strips  laid diagonally.

Volunteers will be needed to help plant the garden at the end of May with a grand opening in early June. And throughout 2014, regular gardening afternoons 1pm-4pm will be held on the first Sunday of every month – on West Norwood Feast days.

To get in touch email: west_norwood@theediblebusstop.org

Edible Bus Stop is a volunteer led project working with local communities taking on neglected or forgotten sites to transform them into valuable neighbourhood growing spaces.

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Filed under Community / voluntary, Environment, West Norwood

St Lukes Gardens & railings

St.Lukes

St Lukes Gardens & railings – a successful NAG project with NAG and the council

Norwood Action Group social Christmas drinks social evening

7.30pm on Tuesday 8th December at the  Kahvah café 251 Norwood Road.

Norwood Action Group (NAG)  provides a non-party political voice for residents on local issues as they bubble up. Because it meets monthly, NAG can be fast in reacting to events and is independent as it does not depend on funding from a public body. In this way, it differs from the Norwood Forum, which has the advantage of being bigger, able to reach more people with its support from Lambeth and meets several times a year to discuss more strategic local issues. NAG supports the forum, but believe both groups have a role to play.

Everyone is welcome to drop in on Tuesday and meet up with  NAG  members.

NAG started life in 1997 after a public meeting, held by the council to discuss parking ,which broadened into a series of demands for improvements to the town centre. Local people felt Norwood had suffered years of neglect.

In those first years, NAG was  instrumental in negotiating the half-hour parking places in the town centre, introducing Christmas lights and a Christmas tree after many years of seasonal gloom, supporting the campaign by West Norwood Community Development to rescue the Old Library from dereliction and refurbish it as a youth and community centre, and pressing the council to appoint a town centre manager. We ran a gardens competition for several years and had a significant input into the UDP – Lambeth’s long-term development plan for the area.

Later successes have included the refurbishment of the memorial garden in front of St Luke’s Church with the restoration of the railings (a project run jointly with the church) [see photo] ; a survey exploring possible improvements to the area around Tulse Hill station, which produced many ideas now on the council’s agenda, and the campaign to resist a nine-storey block of flats being built on the site of West Norwood Tennis Club. NAG was also instrumental in getting a pedestrian phase at the Norwood Road/York Hill traffic lights and persuading the council to establish a new committee, which is about to start life, to enable the community to have a say in the running of the Old Library.

Contact for more info:  jane.pickard@btinternet.com

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Filed under Churches, Leisure, Parks, West Norwood