Introduction. Spring 2017

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1 Spring 2017 Introduction Set amidst beautiful rolling Borders countryside Lauder is situated beside the River Leader on one of the oldest routes between Edinburgh and England. Our town straddles one of the main trunk roads and despite the town s expansion over recent years it still preserves its original medieval form of a single main street and two back lanes. Lauder Common Riding is one of the original and oldest Border Common Ridings, with references to the festival dating back to the 1600s. The Riding of the Marches (boundaries) relates to a time when the Burgh Lands were not enclosed, and was a serious business failure to attend could result in a fine of 5/- in the early 19th century. The Common Riding is now a week long festival which culminates in the Ride Out of hundreds of horses from all over the Borders on the first Saturday in August. Lauder has plenty of leisure activities available including golf, tennis and bowling as well as a network of footpaths with the Southern Upland Way passing through our town. Lauder has a lot to offer with a range of independent shops and places to eat and is growing as a tourist destination. Our town also has an increasing mix of community organisations. Lauder in Bloom (LiB) began in 2014 in part at least as a response to a comment that Lauder is a long grey town and nothing much could be done about it! We began by adopting the handful of neglected planters and existing Council beds in the centre of town. We have expanded outwards adopting various un-loved areas and working with lots of other community groups. We currently look after:- 51 planters; 32 hanging baskets; and 24 beds and this number continues to grow each year. In the Scottish Borders Council Floral Gateway awards we achieved 3 rd place in the Large Village category, the Welcome award (2 nd year entrants), a Clean & Tidy award, and the Quality of Life award (for which we were given a new bench). At the Keep Scotland Beautiful It s Your Neighbourhood award ceremony in Stirling we were delighted to receive an Outstanding award a very welcome step up from the Thriving award in 2015 which was our first year of entry. We describe ourselves as a small core group of 11 have-a-go gardeners and we are fortunate that we have great support from our community. 1

2 Horticultural Achievement Autumn We created a Sensory Planter with the Scouts at the health centre. The sweet peas from this planter were regularly displayed in the reception. The sweet peas were planted late and were still flowering mid-november. We used home-made twine from old plastic bottles to tie them in. We created a new bed at the entrance to the school and worked with the School Gardening Club to plant spring bulbs and sow wildflower seeds. We worked with the Beavers planting lots of spring bulbs and sowing wildflowers at the health centre beds which we are beginning to garden. The children also made pots of bulb lasagne to take home with them. We added 100s of additional crocus bulbs to areas at two of the entrances to Lauder to boost the spring displays as well as helping the Rotary Club plant theirs. In the previous autumn, with the help of the Scouts, we had planted in excess of 1500 daffodils alongside an approach road into the Town. The backdrop was wild ground so to enhance the site we commissioned a dry stane dyke in keeping with the many stone walls in the area. We also enhanced the diamond shaped bed by commissioning a low dyke round the top edges of the bed. It will now be the focal point we had hoped for. Summer bedding plants were lifted, recycled where possible and the rest were composted. Winter When LiB was formed we agreed to maintain 3 planting areas surrounding the iconic Town Hall in the centre of the Town (2 side beds and a large raised bed). These areas contained a high degree of green shrubs making it difficult to provide much colour in the summer. After much consideration it was decided by the team that these high-focus areas would be converted to provide an eyecatching floral display for summer. Work began to completely empty these areas and the plants were temporarily planted up for future use elsewhere. To avoid leaving the two side plots bare we purchased 8 plant containers and filled these with small herbaceous evergreens and muscari bulbs whilst daffodil bulbs were planted in the ground. We enlisted help from a local ex-landscaper to produce a design to give further height in the centre of the raised bed. Spring 2 A grass plot with daffodils next to the speed camera with a multitude of cables below was our next challenge. We (carefully) lifted the grass and added in a good number of herbaceous plants and grasses to maintain all year round interest. We had previously taken over the plot in front of the police station and improvements were made to the shrub bed by pruning/removing some of the overgrowth and replanting with small rhododendrons and evergreen herbaceous geraniums.

3 Towards the end of the season we began to remove spring plants to the compost bays. Primulas were divided and re-planted in our plant-recycling plot. We have created 2 new wildflower beds at the entrance to Lauder from Stow (so that now all entrances to our town have a floral welcome). The School Gardening Club grew some of these wildflowers from seed for us. Whilst awaiting a longer-term decision on an area of grass owned by a local housing authority we worked with the Beavers and installed temporary community herb gardens up cycled from old wooden crates and coffee sacks. We used broken roofing slates as plant markers. The planters were filled with top soil from a building site and some of our home-made compost. We also taught the Beavers about trees through the different seasons and this helped them to achieve their Gardener s Badge. The herbs are proving popular with locals! Inspired by North Berwick we have created Lauder s first ever stumpery in an area that was prone to litter. Lauder Stumpery - May 2017 Community Herb Garden - May 2017 Summer The 3 central town hall beds have been planted up with colourful annuals for the maximum colourful impact. We are experimenting with some vegetables and have planted some runner beans in the running club bed. We trimmed the hedge at the entrance to Lauder to improve visibility using shears to reduce disturbance to any nesting birds. We also strim alongside the paths at Burnmill. We up cycled an old gardening trolley into a planter at a bed where the ground was problematic. We created a Wimbledon-inspired planter for the tennis club next to their club house using car tyres, old wooden tennis racquets with strawberry plants and nasturtiums. We like to show how you don t need a big budget to produce results. 3

4 Environmental Responsibility We use a mix of annual and perennial planting with some beds such as those at the Town Hall having predominantly annuals whilst those at the park have mainly perennials. The majority of the plants in the 3 previously un-loved beds at the park are divisions from our own gardens or sown by us from seed. We reuse as many of our plastic plant pots as possible. They are especially useful when we run sessions with the various community groups who often take home a pot of bulbs / cuttings etc. We also make plant labels from milk cartons. We hope to get people thinking differently about some rubbish and how it can be repurposed. We don t use pesticides or herbicides and we show our supporters (via our face book group) alternative methods of dealing with common problems. We have our own compost bays which we made from old pallets. We use this compost where possible and buy in additional as required. When we do need to purchase compost we are moving towards using only peat free versions. Autumn We removed many of the polyanthus from the planters, over-wintered them in our plot, and planted them out again in the spring. We have purchased reusable plastic beakers for the Public Hall so that users, including Lauder in Bloom, don t need to use disposable ones. We were able to apply for a grant from the Council to erect a small fence around our adopted plots at the park which has enormously improved our ability to grow plants there. We have dubbed these beds our Pollinators the Park as we have tried to plant mainly pollinator-friendly plants providing suitable flowers over a long season. We have run two Friends of the Earth Great British Bee count sessions here with the Brownies with great results. Pollinators the Park - May

5 Winter The stems from the herbaceous perennials in the park beds are left in place over winter providing shelter for insects whilst the seed heads from the teasels are a useful source of food for birds. We supported the Little Lauder Lego Legends and made them a Bee-themed hamper to help them with one of their fundraisers. Their project looked into the devastating effect of neonicotinoids on the Bee population. Spring We held a community tree planting day where locals lent a hand to plant 107 native trees. We used squares of old carpet as mulch instead of using weed killers. Following a Woodland Trust site visit we planted them in small groups with grass in between to encourage the greatest biodiversity. The old plants stems from the park beds were cut and used to make the bug hotel with the After School Club. In particular the hollow teasel stems were put to good use. At our annual Spring Workshop we provided locals with advice on how to minimise watering, garden in wildlife-friendly ways and we had pollinator-friendly plant choices available for them to plant up their hanging baskets and planters. Dog fouling we renewed our posters around town in the spring. The Council s Green Dog Walkers scheme came along to our Spring Workshop as well as Lauder s own newly established Good Dog Citizen stand. We have also provided dog poo bags next to an area which was particularly prone to mess. We held our annual Spring Tidy Up where over 25 locals turned up to lend a hand. We were able to recycle much of the collected rubbish. The Scouts also attended and worked towards their World Challenge Badge. We lend out litter pickers to residents who are keen to do a bit as and when suits them. We also purchased 12 child-sized litter pickers for the school to help them work towards their Eco Schools Award. Summer Where possible self-sown seedlings, such as foxgloves, are transplanted from one area to another. We have harvested the comfrey from our beds and added some to our compost heap and used the rest to make compost tea to feed some of our other plants such as the runner beans. We have planted one of our beds with the Lauder colours of blue & yellow. 5

6 Community Engagement We have been fortunate enough to have a Duke of Edinburgh participant volunteering with us for both her Bronze & Silver levels. The local football and running clubs help us to maintain two of the beds at the park. We are pleased to be supporting the Space to Grow project at our local mental health inpatient unit. We have a very active face book group currently 343 members and growing all the time. It is a really useful online notice board and provides a good place for discussion. We also have a useful suggestion box at our events. We provide regular articles in the Lauderdale News a free quarterly newspaper which is delivered to 1,450 local households. We maintain the community notice board and we regularly send out s to our 60 supporters. Autumn We worked with the Brownies planting alliums, daffodils & tulips at the beds at the park. They also made up pots of bulb lasagne to take home with them. We ran a session with the Guides planting 30 native trees helping them work towards their annual Challenge Badge. Held our annual Wild About Gardens community event. This year it was a bat theme. We helped residents to plant up pots of spring bulb lasagne, ran an interactive display on how to make your garden bat-friendly, provided a bat origami session as well as selling our popular knitted animals (kindly created by our supporters). We planted up old trainers to decorate the fence outside the Sports Pavilion for the Lauder leg of the Borders Cross Country series. We also held a community workday clearing the gorse on some of the footpaths including those used for the Cross Country route. Wild About Gardens event - October 2016 Lauder Cross Country -November

7 Winter Once again we teamed up with the Lauder Christmas Lights Group and held our annual Festive Foliage community event as well as running a session at the school. We encouraged locals to make one and take one away. We created over 100 bunches of evergreen foliage which we decorated all of the lamp posts from one end of Lauder to the other. We also ran a lantern making workshop for the parade using willow from the fence. This year we designed and sent out nearly 100 Christmas cards to all of our volunteers and supporters to thank them for their invaluable help. We ran sessions with Lauder & Blainslie Playgroups creating teacup birdfeeders and encouraging them to take part in the RSPBs Big Garden Birdwatch. We ran our annual Willow Harvest & Take Away session. This year we used some of the willow to create willow dragonflies which we temporarily displayed in the central town hall bed. We also created a low willow fence around the wildflower bed at the school gate. Spring We created our annual bike-themed display to support the 600 riders taking part in the charity Tour de Lauder cycle event. We worked with the After School Club to create a big bug hotel in the school grounds and taught them about the benefits of mini beasts. We ran a session with the Brownies identifying migrating birds, took part in the Friends of the Earth Great British Bee Count as well as the Earthworm Watch Survey. We are working towards more sessions between different existing community groups. We took some of the School Gardening Club to the sheltered housing to help us to plant up bee-friendly summer-flowering bulb lasagne for residents. This also helped the Gardening Club who are working towards their RHS School Gardening Award Level 5. We ran a session with the Guides to identify, survey and label some of the mature trees at Burnmill next to the footpath. We worked with the Scouts to maintain some of the local footpaths. We held our annual Spring Workshop where we invited locals to bring their hanging baskets and planters to fill with plants subsidised by us. This year we helped fill 60 planters. We also ran childrens planting and crafting activities. Again this was a well attended event (approx 150 locals) and saw a good cross-section of our community. 7

8 School Bug Hotel - March 2017 Summer We wanted to help brighten up the main street further so we offer subsidised window boxes to high street residents. This year we provided 33 boxes. We also provide 32 subsidised hanging baskets for the Town Centre. These are purchased by town centre residents & businesses. We worked with the School Gardening Club to create jam jar posies of flowers to decorate the church. They created bee fact labels for the jars. After the service they were distributed to housebound residents. We have created Good Garden Awards. They are non-competitive and are awarded to any resident who has made any positive impact visible from the street. The certificate was designed by the primary school Gardening Club. Several LiB committee members have joined the local Flower Show committee which needed additional support to keep the annual show running. We also created & sponsor the Junior Growto-Show trophy. We also take part in the annual scarecrow competition. We run the annual Lauder Garden Showcase Competition. Categories include most colourful flower garden, best fruit / veg garden and best wildlife garden. The Lauder (New Zealand) Beautification Society contacted us and have provided us with a beautiful wooden Maori designed trophy which we will award to the best wildlife garden winner. Our award winning Olympic-themed entry last year! 8

9 Finance & Support We have a good working relationship with Scottish Borders Council. We have adopted the 3 former Council beds and they provide us with over 1,300 summer bedding plants and do what they can with sweeping and weeding the streets. We started off as a sub-group of Lauderdale Community Council and we continue to have a really good relationship with them also. We are able to subsidise the town centre hanging baskets and window boxes. In addition during our annual Spring Workshop we provide plants as wholesale prices for residents to come along and plant up their own hanging baskets and planters. We are fortunate enough to raise approximately 2,000 each year through our sponsored planters, fundraising events as well as our collection tin in the local shop. Plans for the future Continue to work with different community groups to bring them together in particular crossgenerational activities. Work towards creating more temporary displays e.g. for Common Riding and the Vintage Car Rally. Try to encourage additional regular volunteers. Work with the new owners of the Scout Hall to create a new pocket garden. Work with residents of a relatively new housing area to create small community garden spaces for themselves. Continue to encourage the landscaping along Edinburgh Road including the removal of a couple of unsightly semi-dead evergreen trees as requested by many locals. Propagating mint with the Beavers Wimbledon-inspired planters Planted up garden trolley 9

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