The Friends of Waterloo Park always welcomes new members and you can be involved as much or as little as you like. Some of our members prefer to be involved in organising and staging events whilst others prefer to concentrate on gardening.
Our monthly Saturday afternoon meetings are held in the upstairs room of the cafe. We advertise the date and place on Facebook a few days in advance. We also welcome people who don’t want to, or are unable to, attend our monthly meetings, but like to help with events and gardening. Send us an email.
We started work on the borders to the south of the pavilion in 2019 and the following year we took responsibility for the beds to the north of the pavilion giving us a total of thirty beds to re-plant and manage. At that stage the beds were mostly planted with an invasive geranium and rose bushes which were old and had past their best. We have a strong gardening group of about fifteen to twenty and work on a 'drop in' basis so there is no need to make a commitment to come on a regular basis.
As we worked on the beds it became evident that we would have to seriously reconsider our planting in view of climate change and the fact that we do not have easy access to water. In the Autumn of 2023, having been to Beth Chatto's Garden in Essex, we decided to experiment by planting four of our beds with drought tolerant plants. The late Beth Chatto was a pioneer in developing a gravel garden as her garden in Essex has one of the lowest rainfall records in the country.
We were pleased with the results so in the Spring of 2024 we applied for a grant from the Norfolk Community Gardens Trust which enabled us to plant another eight beds in this way. After the hottest and driest Summer on record we are delighted with the results. We have lost some plants but on the whole the plants have performed well in spite of the lack of water. We hope to continue in this way but it will depend on future funding. Where possible we try to propagate our own plants or grow them from seed.
View photosYou will see from our events sections that we have enjoyed organising several free events for our local community and we have more planned for the future. Keep an eye on our Facebook page as we always ask for volunteers.
