September means the start of a new term of gardening courses and workshops at WEN. Carol is the tutor of ‘Wirral: Our Environment’, a 5 week course covering composting, climate change, local initiatives and the Big Green List, Wirral’s Tree Strategy, recycling and volunteering.

This course will run again, starting on 10th November, with the new title of ‘Gardening and Our Changing Climate‘. View the course leaflet here. If you would like to sign up, please view the course listing on the Wirral Lifelong Learning website, email lifelonglearning@wirral.gov.uk or telephone 0151 666 3330.

Carol also leads Discover Gardening courses, which run every term at WEN. ‘Practical Gardening’, ‘A-Z of Gardening’ and ‘Garden Group’ take place once a week and cost £60 for a 10 week term. The next enrolment dates are in January. View the Discover Gardening Courses leaflet here. For more information or to book on a course, phone 0151 639 2121 or 07932 355742, or email carol.seery1@btinternet.com

As well as the courses at WEN, in September Carol ran a workshop and course on Self Sustainable Food Production at Ilford Avenue allotments in Wallasey. If you are involved with an allotment site and would like to host a similar workshop for your plot holders, please email us wen@la21.net

Naomi had an early start to give a talk on reuse and recycling at a breakfast meeting of the Mid Wirral Rotary Club.

On 10th September we held an Open Day at St James Garden. It was lovely to see people taking time to have a chat and admire the garden. Stalls included food tasting, homemade jam and chutney for sale and a raffle. There were also free trees for everyone to take home!

The Eco Art made several appearances throughout the month. First Wallasey Tree Planting Group took the artworks to Flynn’s Piece as an added attraction for the volunteers taking part in a tree maintenance session.

The flower sculptures spent two Sundays at New Ferry Butterfly Park, with the second visit timed to coincide with the guided tours on Heritage Open Day.

Three schools booked the Eco Art in September. St Mary’s Catholic College displayed the sculptures at their Open Day. Pupils at Christ Church CE Primary School and Mersey Park Primary School had outdoor lessons about the different flowers and the importance of pollinators. They also enjoyed examining the repurposed materials that make up the artworks.

We took part in two events on one very busy weekend. The first was the Wirral Earth Fest Picnic in West Kirby on Saturday 24th September, with lots of other local environmental organisations providing fun, earth-friendly activities. We helped spread the word about Cool 2, Wirral’s Climate Change Strategy.

Then, on Sunday 25th September, we attended the Summer Cycle at Brimstage with our information stall. The flower sculptures came along too!

At the end of the month we held the first of a series of weekly climate change workshops at Make It Happen – Birkenhead. Naomi spoke about how to take action to reduce the impact climate change has had on our environment. We also played the ‘How Bad Are Bananas’ game, to work out which items have the biggest carbon footprint! These workshops will take place every Tuesday until 18th October. Please email info@makeithappenbirkenhead.co.uk if you would like to find out more.