Making a bulb planter for a Spring display

As Autumn is just around the corner its now time to think about planting bulbs to give you that Spring display.

Last year on GTDT's all season gardening course one of the topics  covered was " How to create a lasagne bulb container". 

The lasagne bulb container is really simple to do and has an impressive impact come spring, follow the link below for the demonstration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQKFrIXS-jk&t=2s

Here are some examples of the bulbs that you can choose for your display. 

Small early bulbs can include:

Crocus, Scilla, Muscarti,Freesia

Medium sized bulbs:

Tulips, hyacinths, Narcissus

Large late season bulbs:

Daffodils, Tulips, Lillie's, Alliums

National Garden Scheme and Fern Grove garden

We had a fabulous day at Fern Grove garden on Sunday. The garden was open for the annual National Garden Scheme and what a great day it was.

Home made Elderberry juice, home made paella and pizzas,  live music, bee keeping demonstrations and of course the sunshine!

Healthy Food Club

In July 2021 we were awarded Holiday Activity and Food programme (HAF) funding to deliver activities and food (breakfast & lunch) to children and young people aged 5 to 17 during the school summer holidays.

We focussed our efforts on our local wards of Picton, Princes Park and Riverside, albeit we also helped a number of families in other wards as well. 

We utilised our existing links and networks across these wards and worked with St. Gabriel’s and Riverview Development Trust in the Dingle, our Detached Youth Work team in all wards and our Roma community workers in Picton to identify families that would benefit.

Our Holiday Food Club bags were tailored to meet the current school food standards for nutrition and contained enough food to cover a minimum of breakfast and lunch for each weekday, but we always made sure that there was a bit extra in each bag so that parents and/or younger siblings could also have something healthy to eat as well.  Over the course of 6 weeks, we provided weekly food bags that helped provide in excess of 18,180 meals!

We worked with some fabulous suppliers over the course of the holidays including the Manchester Super Store (for 3 tonnes of potatoes), Spendwell (for dairy products), Coultons (for bread), Langs (for eggs), Jimmy Dunn (for fruit bags) and BestWay and CostCo.

Whilst initially we had intended to deliver all the food bags, the sheer volume meant that this was not physically possible and we set up 3 collection points, one in each ward for us to distribute the Holiday Food Club bags from.  In total we distributed over 20 tonnes of food!

With all schemes of this type, there are always times where bags weren’t picked up as families were away or people were ill, but we made sure that nothing went to waste, we donated any perishables to other local schemes such as the Greenhouse Project and local foodbank initiatives and at the end of the holidays we provided Veterans HQ with left over bags for their residents and local community.

We couldn’t have achieved this without our fabulous volunteers and staff who really rose to the occasion and ensured that no child registered with us went hungry!

Summer of Fun - GTDT Activities

Throughout the summer we have been holding many activities for children over the age of 8 with thanks to the Holiday Activity and Food programme (HAF) funding we were awarded. We have been on many adventures to local parks, to Gulliver's World, to the cinema and bowling!

Sonjia, one of the members of staff said "My favourite trip has to be when we went to Gulliver's world. Watching the children on all of the rides smiling and laughing away, from the log flume to the big dipper. The children even inspired me to go on my first rollercoaster at the age of 53! I loved every minute of it and I know that the children did too. It has been fantastic to watch friendships blossom between the children throughout the different activities. All in all it has been an amazing summer, it has been great to come together and to be able to do trips and activities with the children after not being able to do so because of the pandemic."

The children did many activities such as bowling, where they all were very excited to be competitive and cheer each other on, the following week they went to the cinema where they saw the movie Space Jam and they received a junior box which contained popcorn, sweets and a drink. They visited the park each week, on one occasion Poppy from Everton In The Community got involved and played many different activities with the children. On another occasion the children went and joined in the activities with LFC Foundation where they took part in plenty of different activities such as football, arts & crafts and at the end of the day there was a bouncy castle for the children to play on.

Caroline, one of the staff members said "Over the summer I have met a lot of lovely and well behaved children and made friends with the parents. Due to COVID-19 we were unable to have any indoor activities in our centre but if we were able to I know that the children would have enjoyed the activities even more than they did. If I had the same group of children I would gladly hold activities with the children 5 days per week instead of the current 3 days per week because they are all so amazing!"

On one of our sessions the children took part in a litter pick. The litter pick was great as the kids live in the local area and they felt that they were making their community look nicer and more beautiful, it was very rewarding for them and they all had a sense of accomplishment. It was great to get the local PCSO's involved with the litter pick too as this broke down barriers with the police and the children. 

All of the children really enjoyed the activities and have said that they are excited to see what happens during the Autumn half term when we are doing the activities again with one of the children saying "I really enjoyed going to Gulliver's World! Granby Toxteth Development Trust made my summer better. I cannot wait for October half term to see what we do then!"

Last Day Of Summer

We spent the last day of our summer holidays in Cullen street with our partners and colleagues from the NHS actively encouraging people to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. A large number of people who received their vaccination that afternoon were from the BAME community which was one of the targets the NHS are trying to improve. A personal success was persuading the ice cream man who has worked alongside GTDT throughout the summer providing hundreds of ice creams to receive his first jab. Well done Paul! 

We provided kids activities to encourage the parents to come along and receive their jab while we kept their children entertained. The most popular activity proved to be a visit from our friends from Luma Creations with a drum taster session. It was certainly a very noisy and energetic activity. We have agreed to continue to support our colleagues in arranging more locally based vaccination events in the future.