Spring Time

Your regular update from

It looks like Spring is finally upon us, after so many grey & blustery days. The warmer weather heralds the planting season for gardeners, and in March we held a very successful Seed Swap Day. Gardeners were able to bring along any unwanted seeds and swap away, whilst chatting to fellow gardeners. Surplus seeds were donated to the Saltash Gardening Club, for their veg-growing at Saltash Community School. The Gardening Group volunteers have managed to bring about 1/3 of the plot back into cultivation, but we’re always looking for more volunteers! If you have any seeds lurking in a cupboard or drawer which you’d like to donate, please drop them in to the Community Hub.

In March, we also made native wildflower Seedbombs, and gave them away. Look out for wild corners of Saltash bursting into colour in the summer, attracting bees, hoverflies and other pollinators. At this time of year, we need to be mindful of the humble bees. Bees play a huge part in the food chain, and it would be catastrophic if they were to disappear.

Follow these simple steps to help bees…

• Provide nesting materials and sites

• Plant year-round flowering plants, including shrubs and trees

• Plant bee-friendly plants like lavender, rosemary, marjoram or catmint

• Ditch all weedkiller and bug sprays

• Leave the lawnmower more often in the shed and embrace the ‘weeds’ in your lawn

• Create a bee watering hole

Leave those untidy corners in your garden, and learn to love the dandelions in your lawn. If we all do just a couple of small things, it will help to save the bee population. If you’d like to learn more about helping bees, see the article “Be Bee Friendly” on our website.

Recycling

Saltash has several recycling initiatives, & our own recycling scheme for inkjet cartridges has now saved over 10kg of plastic cartridges from going into landfill, whilst we’ve raised over £100 towards

community and environmental projects like the wildflower Seedbombs. We’re currently collecting inkjet cartridges, old mobile phones, stamps, and foreign currency; pop into the Community Hub with any donations.

Spring Hopper

Trips If you’re new to the town, then come along on some of our organised trips. You’ll make new friends and visit new places. Making the most of the longer days & warmer weather, we have some super trips planned for April, including Topsham market, Mount Edgcumbe, Lost Gardens of Heligan & Mevagissey, and our ever-popular Sunday Lunch trips. The cost of these trips just covers our overheads, and our team of drivers and organisers are all volunteers; so if you’ve enjoyed your day out, please remember to tell the driver - he or she will really appreciate it. The Hoppers are Community Buses, so if you have any ideas for Hopper Trips you’d like us to organise in 2020, we’d love to hear from you.

Volunteers Needed…

We have a volunteer vacancy in the Community Hub for someone to join our team for 1 day a week (5 hours); the role will include serving & talking to customers, answering the phone, taking Hopper bookings, and helping to keep literature up to date.

Name That Bus!

In May we’ll be introducing an exciting competition to help name our two Hopper buses, currently (and very unexcitingly) known as H1 and H2. The winning names will be emblazoned proudly on the side of the buses, and the two winners will each receive a Hopper trip for their organisation for up to 16 people. Full details and rules will be announced in the May edition of Love Saltash, so get your thinking hats on, and watch this space! For further details on any of the above, contact us;

website, www.CEPL12.co.uk

email hub@cepl12.co.uk

tel. 01752 849334

Community Enterprises, 4 Fore St, Saltash, PL12 6JL