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Well Done the Lexi Cinema!

The LexiThe Lexi Cinema

If you voted in the recent Time Out readers vote ‘London’s Favourite Cinema’ you will be pleased to know that our very own Lexi Cinema came third out of 25 best cinemas in London, beating rival cinemas such as the Curzon Mayfair (23rd), Barbican (17th), Vue Westfield, Shepherd’s Bush (15th) and Empire Leicester Square (11th).

Congratulations to the Lexi!!

For Scrubs Sake!

For Scrubs Sake!London Transport are currently carrying out consultation on the positioning of the new stations at Old Oak Common – it closes on 24th November.

The Friends of Wormwood Scrubs are encouraging votes for Option C which is the one that affects the scrubs itself less.

It is worth noting for any of you that aren’t particularly familiar with these areas that as well as the particular natural habitat of the scrubs that from our local perspective and given current discussions throughout Queen’s Park on the responsibilities of local dog owners that the big and little Scrubs currently offer our easiest accessible large areas for off lead exercise of dogs and are used widely for those purposes. They also offer relatively affordable sports pitch bookings for schools and groups and non-bookable areas for organised sports and games, kite flying etc.

It is well worth taking a look at their information on this https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/london-overground/old-oak-common/consultation/intro/view and also that of the Friends of Wormwood Scrubs http://www.friendsofwormwoodscrubs.org.uk/post/99659671216/for-scrubs-sake.

We have precious few green areas of this nature in the locality, we encourage you to look at the information available and cast your vote.

Having Fun Learning in the Wildlife Area

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A huge welcome from the Friend’s of Queen’s Park Gardens to the children from the Sunrise Preschool. Staff and children started using the Wildlife Area regularly this October and are enjoying it hugely.

Nicole from Sunrise reports, ‘We have become attached to the site and have been doing a bit of litter clearing and looking after.

Recently the children have enjoyed looking underneath the logs in the bug hotels where we have seen slugs,

snails, woodlice, spiders and some really unusual fungus which I believe is called “Bootstrap” and “Deadmans fingers”!!!’

The staff at Sunrise Preschool are all Qualified Forest School Leaders as well as nursery teachers and it is really
important to them that their impact on the Wildlife garden is a positive one and a respectful one.
Nicole continues ‘Our aim is to deepen the children’s connection with nature and to encourage them to feel part of the natural world…
hopefully this will mean we have a future  local generation who understand how important the plants, trees and creatures are for our
cohesive survival on this wonderful earth.
We hope that Sunrise will be the first of many children’s groups and schools to use the Wildlife Area regularly. It is easy to arrange to have the gates unlocked for your group or class to use. Please use the contact form below…

 

New Playground Equipment

All Change in the Children’s Playground

The exciting news is that we’ve received funding from the Sita Trust for new equipment and upgrades in the Children’s Playground. The Friends of Queen’s Park, Local residents and children, Westminster Parks and Continental Landscapes have all worked together to make this happen and you voted for the type of equipment you wanted to have.

The exact specifications of the design are still be finalised following site visits but the illustration left gives you a really good idea of what is coming.

Work starts on Tuesday 21 May and the playground will need to be closed from then until the end of the month. It is planned that the playground will reopen by Monday 2 June.

If you have any queries or questions about the plans for the playground please get in touch with us.

Leave us a message on 020 3129 3289 or email us at gardens@nullqueenspark.org

Your Park! Your Neighbourhood! Get Involved!

Queen’s Park Summer Festival

Queen's Park Summer Festival 2014

The Queen’s Park Summer Festival is back and bigger than ever celebrating its Eleventh birthday on Saturday 2nd of August in Queen’s Park Gardens, Ilbert Street W10 from 12 Noon-6pm.

This extremely popular annual event has grown year on year and has a large dedicated following. The event is co-ordinated by Cllr Ryan James Dalton on behalf of the new Queen’s Park Community Council and brings together a range of partners* and resident volunteers to deliver a fantastic free event and diverse community celebration.
This year promises to be the best yet with a non-stop showcase of diverse local and professional talent on the main stage, sports and games from Westminster Sports Unit and QPR on the sports pitch, entertainment for younger children in the play area, a chill out area with information and activities on healthy living, global food, a bouncy castle assault course, climbing wall and bucking bronco, and local stalls and entertainment dotted throughout the park. For older residents Open Age and City west Homes are putting on afternoon tea with line dancing and live salsa entertainment (and of course bingo) from 1-5pm in St Jude’s Hall.
This event plays host to over 2000 people annually and continues to grow year on year.
The Queen’s Park Summer Festival is the key highlight in the wider Paddington Festival taking place across Queen’s Park, Westbourne and Harrow Road and the rest of Paddington all over the summer. See www.paddingtonfestival.co.uk for more details.
It has the biggest turnout and is a great opportunity for businesses to promote themselves.
*Partners include: Westminster Sports Unit, Avenues Youth Project, Community Champions, Westminster Libraries, Beethoven Centre’s Health Hub, Queen’s Park Children’s Centre, Tell It Parents Action Group, Rainbow Family Centre, City West Homes, Open Age, Queen’s Park Safer Neighbourhood Team, Vital Regeneration, Paddington Development Trust and Westminster Special Events.

Queen’s Park Gardens Visit 21st June 2014

Queen’s Park Gardens 21st June 2014

We decided to tackle the overgrown circular area around the bush in Queen’s Park Gardens. This area has not been touched since Alex carefully planted tulips, last November. Now the Wildflower Meadow has been sown, apart from weeding  we can focus our attention on other areas.
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Unfortunately, some bulbs were dug up in the course of digging out weeds, sorry Alex. We replanted them carefully.
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Congratulations on a job well done.
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Our next task is to trim the bush.
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If you are interested in helping out for a few hours in our Wildlife Area, please come along to our next session. Click for dates and times.

Gallery Photos

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Wildlife Area Visit 12th April 2014

Wildlife Area Session 12th April 2014

This weekend we found, what seemed like thousands, Sycamore seedlings round the wildflowers.

If not removed, these seedlings will grow into saplings with deep roots.

Unfortunately, the most efficient method of removing these seedlings is by hand.

 

Here, Simon is removing bindweed which has grown in a short space of time.
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Here, Anne is pruning dead flower heads (daffodils), a process of removing  dying or dead flowered heads giving the plant a chance of flowering again.

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If you are interested in helping out for a few hours in our Wildlife Area, please come along to our next session. Click for dates and times.

Gallery Photos

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More Equipment for the Children’s Play Area

LGC column Nov 21 by Susanna Rustin

Success! Queen’s Park Community Council won’t exist for another six months, yet we’ve managed to raise £60,000 to fund improvements to our well-loved but ill-equipped local playground. We submitted a joint application with Westminster City Council back in the summer, following meetings that brought together members of the parish council development group, Friends of Queen’s Park Gardens, the council parks department, ward councillors and the landscaping company that looks after open spaces in the borough. The discussions and form-filling took hours. I danced across my office when we learned it had all been worth it.

Sita Trust, the charitable wing of waste and recycling company Sita, is the source of this much needed investment in play equipment for the 7+ age group, and I can’t tell you have pleasing it is to have embarked on the process of spending this money. Back in January an old but serviceable steel climbing frame was removed from the park without warning. Disbelief turned to anger as local parents including me realised there was no plan to replace it. We organised a petition and the local paper published before-and-after pictures, the latter a depressing tableau of bare earth and disgruntled children swaddled in hats and scarves against the freezing weather.

But once we had identified Sita Trust’s Enhancing Communities fund as a plausible solution we established a good relationship with Westminster officials. They have embraced some if not all our notions of what the new playground might be, and we are confident that when it is completed next year it will be vastly better. In keeping with the community council’s commitment to maximising engagement, we are planning a focus group at a local school and a consultation that goes beyond notices pinned up with an email address to write to.

Bringing investment into our neighbourhood was always part of the plan for the community council. As yet we have no formal target, but in order to justify the additional tax residents will pay to fund the council, we need to show we can raise money as well as spend it.

So far so good. We have shown we can put a good pitch together. But while no one could begrudge the kids of Queen’s Park a decent play area – our ward is around two-thirds social housing with pockets of acute deprivation – it worries me to think of all the other areas suffering budget cuts, particularly to facilities for children, that won’t be so lucky. I hope Queen’s Park Community Council will prove to be an innovative, sustainable, entrepreneurial response to the public sector cuts that brought about our campaign in the first place. But we are not the solution.

Wildflower Meadow (Part 2)

We needed to finish seeding the wildflower meadow such that it could be ready by the summer festival so we decided to work both Saturday and Sunday. Some of use slept well on Sunday night.

The section that was seeded last time seems to be sprouting. photo KVS_1804_zpsuepagcqo.jpg

Working on a new section. photo IMG_0466_zpssx8j8bux.jpg
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Another section completed!
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All done for the day.< photo KVS_1834_zpsjo3zdzkg.jpg

Some of the daisies in the meadow. photo IMG_0465_zpsi5arksav.jpg