Dear Friends of Henrietta Park
Winner of the B&NES Love Your Park Community Connectors Award 2023
Congratulations! It gives me great pleasure to announce that the Friends of Henrietta Park have won the Community Connectors Award for B&NES. This award celebrates projects that have brought people together from all sections of the community, helping people feel welcome and fostering a sense of belonging.
The Friends work was greatly appreciated by the panel. I now enclose your certificate and a £60 voucher for the Urban Garden.
Here are some highlights from your nominations:
•The Friends of Henrietta Park like a challenge! This autumn they have initiated a practical project to create a stumpery in a comer of the park that has been troubled by some incidents of anti social behaviour. Working to their design, agreed with BANES with help from Your Park, indefatigable volunteers lan Critchley and Henry Ford have galvanised volunteers to tackle the laurel to open up the area. BANES Tree Team will size logs for the stumpery from felled wood on site and volunteers will create the stumpery and plant up with shade-loving ferns and plants for pollinators. The project has already opened up this part of the park and created interest from the public, reduced anti social behaviour and provided opportunities for volunteers to participate in adding another feature to the park.
This is a great example of a Friends group working with Your Park and BANES Park’s Department and Tree Team and park users to demonstrate how local problems can be addressed and how community-led ideas can bring about creative transformative solutions.
*The Friends have, for years, done a marvelous job of making the park a loved space for people across the local community, an island of rest in the middle of a heavily urbanised setting. Incredibly valuable.’
Congratulations! And thanks for all you do in Henrietta Park.
Kind regards
Judy Gowenlock
Health Network Lead
judy@yourpark.org.uk
