Information below updated on Sunday 15th June 2014

Temporary Fence

The temporary fence has now been taken down as at Sunday 15th June 2014. We left it up for 8 weeks and while it could have stayed up longer to protect the new meadow grass, its also good to see it back to what it was. We ask no events are done on that space for the rest of the year. Hopefully the grass we’ve used will withstand the use, as it is ideal for flowers too. Eventually we’d like a higher proportion of wild flowers in amongst the grass.

Maryhill Fire Birgade came out Friday 18th April 2014 to water the newly sowed wild flower grass meadow. A big thanks to them as rain wasn’t forecast for a few days. As it happened the kids from Step by Step Nursery were down on the land playing as they rent one of the raised beds there. The fireman gave each of them a turn at directing the hose and making rainbows. Fingers crossed we now get the right weather!! All we do now is wait.

Special thanks and recognition to Gregor for his sterling efforts in manging the meadow flowers and grass over the years. Creating and manging the right habitat that flowers can grow along side grass isn’t as easy as it looks!

The consulation on putting up the temporary fence has ended and given the largly positive feedback we have now gone ahead and put up the temporary fence. Please bear with us while this repair work is carried out to the Meadow. No one wants a fence ofcourse long term, but its needed temporary to help the meadow recover from the increase in use. The plan has been to : put wooden posts up with tape, fork and rake up the muddy parts, spread about two tonnes of fresh compost on the bare parts, sow grass seed thats friendly to a meadow, contact with soil, leave alone, once grass etc rooted and growing remove fence. We’ve gone for 6 different kinds of Meadow Grass (4.2kg) : Common Bent, Creeping Bent, Sweet Vernal Grass, Crested Dog’s Tail, Chewings Fescue and Smooth-Stalked Meadow Grass. In addition we’ve included some wild flower seed (1.2kg) too but we don’t expect all the flowers to last long in the middle part – the point is to reintroduce grass seed thats friendly to a wild flowering meadow. We’ve also repaired small bare parts in other parts of the meadow too. In particular sowing seed around the main entrance from Kelbourne street (although it could do with more flower seed which we may buy or please let us know if you can donate and sow yourself?).

If you have any concerns with this process or what we are doing please do email us or come along to discuss at our weekly Sunday growing sessions (all welcome!) between 2-4pm. We feel its important to keep everyone on side while this work happens (by the way we need help doing it, so if you have spare time then come and get involved……get some exercise, fresh air, do some good and learn how to manage a Meadow 🙂

We ask that no events are stationed on that part this year to give it a breather.

All this work above brings up a good question on what kind of organization does the local community want to manage North Kelvin Meadow? There needs to be one that makes sure all interested parties are given a say whether thats: Dog Walkers, Children, Allotment people, Compost people, picnic people, local residents and so on? Over the last 6 years this website has tried to do that but to get us over the line with the Council it may well need to be on a more formal footing to show it has named representatives from the various groups that use the land? What do you think?

The five bare patches.
You’ll see on the far side of the meadow there has been 5 new meadow patches created. These were planted up on Friday 4th April 2014 with about 23 different kinds of Wild Flower Meadow seed. Mostly Perenials but a few Annuals too. The process has been as pervious years: turn turf over, rake up and sow seed ensuring good contact. The strategy is to concentrate on that far side as it doesn’t get so much foot or paw fall. It will also provide a good length of colour along one whole side. The shape (a long length, but with gaps to allow natural paths) also means the flower seed has maximum chance to cultivate the rest of the meadow. A few examples of the 23 kinds of seed are: Meadow Cransbill, Selfheal, Bush Vetch, Cornflower, Corn Poppy, Meadow Buttercup, Lady Bedstraw, Ribwort Plantain and Ox-eye Daisy. We’ll be planting Yellow Rattle in Sept / Oct on the fringes of these patches as that specie is important for meadows.
This all takes money I’m afriad. All the work is done by local volunteers from our community and we’ve tried to get items as cheap as we can. The Meadow seed for example for much of the above came to £245. But we’ll probably buy more, and then there is all the bulbs to meet our 1,000 bulb challenge. The list goes on……

Anyway if you can donate please do. We are currently overdrawn by more than £-500!

Bank Account Name: North Kelvin Meadow Campaign, Bank Account: 00174585 Sort Code: 82-64-26
Cheques made payble to: North Kelvin Meadow Campaign (email us at northkelvinmeadow@gmail.com to ask for postal address)

We are a registered Scottish charity number SC041346

We would appreciate anyone telling us whether this is the closest large scale Wild Flowering Meadow to Glasgow city centre? The land is 1.4 hectares although some of that is woodland.

Composting – On a different but important topic we could do with more people that want to get involved in our Composting Group. Please do email in to northkelvinmeadow@gmail.com to let us know if composting is something your interested in and we’ll put you in touch with Neil who manages this group? Composting is a little more difficult than one thinks when done as a community. So its good for us all “to talk” on this one! Special thanks to Elspeth and Keith who have been helping with the stirring rota. At the moment they are trying to reduce the number of flies in the composters by adding a layer of carbon (paper, leaves, grass) or finished compost to cover all fresh fruit and veg waste.