After a summer break in August, we enjoyed getting back into the swing of things in September as WEN activities restarted.

The gardening courses began a new term, covering topics such as general maintenance for gardens in autumn and planning ahead for spring colour. The courses provide a chance to have your gardening problems solved and many of the course members reported an over abundance of slugs in their gardens this summer. An effective deterrent seems to be to spray plants with garlic water. Another query was what to do with green tomatoes.

Carol is hoping to run a new composting workshop and a willow wreath making workshop in November. If you sign up to our email newsletter or like our Facebook page, you’ll be one of the first to find out about these events.

The Crafters and Reclaimers groups also returned to Falkland Road. New members of both groups are welcome to join in, whether you enjoy woodwork or love to get creative with needles, wool, thread and fabric. If you need a reminder about what is happening and when, our Facebook page lists the dates and times of all of our group sessions, as well as other events and courses:
https://www.facebook.com/WirralEnvironmentalNetwork/events

Our community gardens have been full of activity. FROG (Falkland Road Organic Gardeners) meet each Wednesday to grow food and flowers in the raised beds and polytunnels around the WEN building, and the group of volunteers and local residents at St James Garden also get together on Wednesdays to work on the site in Birkenhead North.

If you would like to visit or help in either garden, please email wen@la21.net to find out more.

Potatoes grown in the Green Hub at St James Community Garden

On 7th September, Julie Marshall came to WEN to hold a history workshop to coincide with Wirral Heritage Week. ‘Secrets, Scandals and Conspiracies of the British Monarchs’ examined the less salubrious aspects of the monarchy from 1066 onwards. Featuring exploding corpses, adultery and even a polar bear, it wasn’t for the faint-hearted! Read Julie’s full report of the workshop on our Facebook page. The next session in Julie’s British History workshop series will be ‘Plague and Fire’, where attendees will get the opportunity to dress up as a Plague doctor! Look out for information about this in our email newsletter or on our Facebook page.

One card in a postcard series of British monarchs, dating from the early 1900s, as shown by Julie Marshall at the workshop

Don’t forget, Julie will also be leading a series of workshops on ‘The Four Elements’ (see the poster below for details). The first of the sessions is on 2nd November with an earthy, autumnal theme: What is planet Earth made from? What does the soil on our planet consist of? Which minerals are linked to the Earth element? What did the Ancients believe about the element’s impact on health and personality? Learn how earthquakes in Ancient Greece destroyed two Wonders of the World.

The Four Elements workshops

The Art for Wellbeing course began in September with one session on a Monday evening and one on a Saturday morning. During this 8 week course the attendees will learn methods to interpret and reveal the natural qualities of the living world and discuss therapeutic themes to improve self-esteem and life skills.

Artist and course tutor Angie McCormick explains her approach, “The luxury of having both time and space to be creative in life is rare enough but to share the time and space with others on their creative adventures is a wonderful thing. Each week we have explored different aspects of skills in art alongside group members developing their own piece using the skills they’ve learned, re-learned, practiced or enhanced. It has been wonderful to see what the group’s inspirations and ideas have formed into from the broad themes offered, some being guided by purpose and some by intuition it seems.

The therapeutic themes I present to the group each week, I am realising, acts both as a mechanism for personal growth and a kind of group glue! Sharing reflections and thoughts around the subjects covered allow for a deeper facet to be seen in those that share and in doing so, a sense of deepening comfort in the space seems to take place. Inevitability I meander off topic during discussions but in doing so maybe it enhances the groups organic dynamic and add a little extra unexpected nugget of knowledge? One thing is for sure though, witnessing a group blossoming is both a privilege and a delight and that is gold dust right there.”

An example of artwork produced on Angie McCormick’s courses

After a summer at Eureka Science + Discovery, the giant flower sculptures are back at WEN! They were specially made for the Eco Art in the Park project by Alison Bailey Smith, working with WEN, Wirral Met College, Wirral Eco Schools, UK Unplugged and University of Liverpool students. They highlight some of the Wirral’s beautiful native plants for pollinators.

The sculptures are available for booking by local schools and community groups. See our website for more information:
https://wirralenvironmentalnetwork.org.uk/what-we-do/eco-art-in-the-park

The flower sculptures brought back to WEN after a summer at Eureka.

On 20th September, some of the WEN team attended a Feeding Wirral event at Birkenhead Town Hall. Local agencies and community organisations working to alleviate poverty and food insecurity were invited to co-design a strategy to significantly reduce the need for crisis provision, while improving residents’ access to affordable, nutritious food. We gave feedback on the importance of community gardens in providing fresh food and food diversion schemes to reduce waste.

On the same day, we held a Sustainable Fashion workshop at the St James Centre in Birkenhead North to make plans for their Clothes Swap Café. We had fun making scrunchies from leftover fabric and coming up with other ideas for sustainable fashion, such as using charity clothing collection points and having supplies of items needed for simple repairs.

Successful scrunchie making at St James Centre!

On 23rd September, we were back at the St James Centre for the Clothes Swap Café, with a good selection of donated dresses, tops, coats, and children’s wear.

One of the rails at the St James Centre’s Clothes Swap Café

The next Clothes Swap events will be at WEN, with a Sustainable Fashion workshop on Tuesday 8th October and the Clothes Swap Café on Friday 11th October. If you want to attend the workshop and be part of the volunteer team, please get in touch with us by emailing wen@la21.net

Come along to the Sustainable Fashion workshop and Clothes Swap Café at WEN in October

We made a photo montage from our past Clothes Swap Cafés at NEO Community in June and at Indigo in July. We hope it gets across the fun atmosphere of the events, the range of items donated and the positive reaction from visitors to the idea of swapping clothes.

Also on 23rd September, a team of six from B&Q Wallasey came to WEN to sort out the garden. The session was organised via Neighbourly, which connects charities with businesses that have volunteer time, money or product surplus to donate. It was one of the rainiest days of the year but the team tackled our To Do list, which included recladding the raised beds with wood, fixing the pergola, pruning, and tidying up the paving. Thank you B&Q!

The B&Q team – looking enthusiastic despite all the rain!

At the end of the month, on 28th September, the WEN Crafters joined other eco groups at Wirral Earth Fest in West Kirby. This annual event brings together local organisations, musicians, storytellers and poets for a celebration of sustainable living. The Crafters stall demonstrated the skill of the group in making a wide range of items from repurposed and donated materials, with mug in a bag gift sets, crocheted pumpkins and cacti, door stops, tea cosies, upcycled vintage jewellery, and handbag charms amongst the goods for sale. Linda and Jill did a great job on the stall – despite the heavy rain showers and a slow start to takings, they had raised £152.30 for WEN by the end of the afternoon.

Welcome sign on the approach to Wirral Earth Fest

Some of the WEN Crafters goodies at their Earth Fest stall

Andy, one of our Climate Champions, is retrofitting his listed building home in Birkenhead Park to bring it up to Passivhaus Standards. He showed us around this month and mentioned a few of the things he is doing:

Central Lodge at Birkenhead Park, which is being retrofitted to be made more energy efficient

The approach to retrofitting Central Lodge