We are happy to bring you all some fantastic news. The Pinner Village Gardens Junior Parkrun has now begun, with an invitational test event taking place last Sunday morning. We have to give thanks to Glyn Watkins, one of the FoPVG Committee members, for leading this initiative on our behalf. Also, a very special thanks go out to all the volunteers who have made this possible so far, as well as all those who donated to make this happen.
The Junior Parkrun test event last Sunday
The Junior Parkrun is a 2-kilometre course around the park and is open to children aged between 4 and 14, alongside their family/carers. It will take place every Sunday in the Park at 9 am. Please come along and give it a try, it’s great to improve your fitness and to compete against your personal best time.
Further information is available on our internal Parkrun page here.
In order to take part, you will need to pre-register at the Parkrun website. More details are available here.
We look forward to seeing you all there, and if anyone would like to assist by becoming a race marshall, then please do get in touch with Glyn or Emma at the email addresses at the bottom of this page.
We are pleased to announce two upcoming events for families and children.
We are pleased to be joined by Claudia Mernick and Pippa Reid for The Mayor’s Golden Boots and other Winter Tales, a storybook session that will take place on Sunday, 6th February at 11 am near the climbing rock within the park, under a marquee. Suitable for families and children of all ages.
We are also pleased to announce a bird walk to be conducted by Ian Jackson from Pinner RSPB. This will be taking place on Friday, 18th February between 10 am and midday. Warm, dark coloured clothes are recommended and if you have your own binoculars then that will be helpful. Ian will take you on a walk around the park, looking out for the birds you might otherwise overlook. Meet at the Whittington Way entrance.
As we’re sure you’ll already know, we are seeking to bring a Junior Parkrun to Pinner Village Gardens. This is a weekly run for children aged between four to fourteen across a 2-kilometre route set out in the park. With thanks to those generous donations, the startup fund of £4,000 was raised to enable this to take place.
To reflect the imminent status of the start of the parkrun, we have added a specific page to our menu which can be seen here. This will be updated with the current status of the project, and right now we’re encouraging those who have not already done so, to sign up to take part at:
Initially, we will run a small scale pilot event to test our equipment, course suitability and most importantly………. our preparation! If successful, we plan to go live the following week.
We’ll publicise the start date on social media and personal communications. We’ll also keep the Junior Parkrun details in our event calendar which can be found here.
We are currently creating a list of fantastic volunteers who are happy to help out on the occasional Sunday. Our parkrun needs 14 volunteers each week to enable it to operate. If you feel you could spare an hour of your time, please do contact either:
All Friends and visitors are invited to join representatives of Harrow Council, Thames 21, Harrow Go Green and the Newton Farm School at a meeting over Zoom on Tuesday 16 November at 6:30 pm. The meeting will be to discuss how to go about tackling the climate and nature emergencies, but at a local level within Harrow. These issues will be on the minds of many in the community with the ongoing discussions at COP26 in Glasgow.
At FoPVG we take these issues very seriously and have worked for many years to balance the competing interests of nature projects in our park. We are very fortunate in FoPVG to have Simon Braidman on our Committee, who is also one of the co-founders of Harrow Nature Heroes is also the site manager and one of the wardens for Stanmore Common Local Nature Reserve. If you have any ideas on how best we can work to achieve the collective goals within the climate and nature work within our area, please do get in touch via our contact form here.
Earlier today, volunteers from the Friends of Pinner Village Gardens welcomed David Simmons, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, to the park where he joined us for one of our working parties. Cllr Simmons has been the Conservative MP for the constituency since 2019.
During his visit, he was able to see the work recently completed on the new stone raised bed at the Rayners Lane entrance, which was designed to mirror the bed installed during the 1930s at the Whittington Way entrance and bring a sense of symmetry to the park.
He subsequently praised the beauty of the park on Twitter, where he posted a selfie with the mural near the Rayners Lane entrance. The Friends funded this mural during the pandemic, with members voting on the chosen design. We would like to thank David for his kind words about the park, and for taking the time to visit us earlier.
For further details on how to join our working parties, please see our volunteers page here.
Recent visitors to the park may have seen works started near the entrance leading onto Rayners Lane/Marsh Road. This is part of the improvements to the grassy “roundabout” in the middle of the path. The area was previously used as the location for the park sign, which the Friends have since had moved to outside the park.
An artist’s impression of the completed project
This location will feature a raised bed within a low stone wall. This is with the intention of mirroring the 1930’s design already in place at the entrance leading from Whittington Way. It will feature new planting and flowers, and a series of raised sculptural elements reminiscent of wild clematis seed heads. These are metal and sprayed with a coating that will encourage them to rust so as to bring additional colour to the area.
Examples of the intended raised elements
As always, a lot of thanks to all those involved in this project. Including both those who have generated the funds, and those volunteers who are completing the work on behalf of the Friends. This is part of an overall plan to bring Pinner Village Gardens in line with the Green Flag Award. Further information can be seen on that Award here.
Examples of a selection of the planting at the new raised bed
Other larger-scale park improvements have also been proposed at the Hereford Gardens entrance, which can be seen here.
Visitors to Pinner Village Gardens will be familiar with the work conducted by the Friends and their volunteers to make the entrances to the park as welcoming as possible. This has seen overhauls of the planting and layouts at the Whittington Way, Rayners Lane/Marsh Road and the Compton Rise entrances. However, there is an as-yet untouched entrance, which leads from Hereford Gardens into the park next to the tennis courts adjacent to the playground.
An overhaul of the Hereford Gardens entrance has been proposed, and we would like to hear your feedback. So please take a look at the designs below, and let us know by responding via this form.
Hereford Gate Proposal
Concept: Plants with fragrance for people, and plants suited to bees and other pollinators to benefit all.
Aims:
To provide a fragrant welcome and interest all year but with particular winter highlights
To add some new plant species for added interest for people and insects
The plants chosen need for low or little management and are suited to the site conditions.
To be achievable by FoPVG volunteers
The areas under consideration today to some 140 –190 square metres and their dimensions are:
Hereford Gate entrance way South facing side 26m x 1.5m continuing to:
Border of Tennis Court South 30m x 3m
Hereford Gate entrance way North facing side 26m x 1.5m
Around PVG Sign at start of Hereford Green 3m x 4m
Stickman Point at Hereford Green 5m x 2m approx.
Additional planting under the trees immediately to the right in the park after entering, and around the adjacent bench, will be considered at a later stage.
Proposed planting at the Hereford Gate area Proposed planting south of the tennis courtsProposed planting on Hereford Green (immediately to the right in the park after entering via Hereford Gardens)
These plans will see the relocation of two existing Amelanchier trees and the addition of the following:
Shrubs:
Buddleja davidii ‘Black Knight’ x 2
Buddleja davidii ‘Royal Red’ x 2
Chaenomeles x superba ‘Jet Trail’ x 1
Chaenomeles x superba ‘Pink Lady’ x 1
Choisya ternata x 2
Hebe ‘Great Orme’ x 2
Hypericum × hidcoteense ‘Hidcote’ x 3
Mahonia aquifolium ‘Apollo’ x 9
Osmanthus delavayii x 1
Sarcococca hookeriana var. digyna ‘Purple Stem’ x 9
Skimma japonica ‘Rubella’ x 10
Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ x 12
Viburnum x burkwoodii ‘Anne Russell’ x 2
Weigela ‘Florida Variegata’ x 2
Ferns:
Asplenium scolopendrium (evergreen fern) x 9
Polystichum setiferum (evergreen fern) Plumosomultilobum Group x 12
We are pleased to announce that the Mayor of Harrow, Cllr Ghazanfar Ali, will be attending Pinner Village Gardens on Sunday 12 September for a tree plaque unveiling ceremony.
With thanks to Harrow Sikhs and The Potohar Association UK, who have supported the work of the Friends, you are invited to attend the ceremony at 1:30 pm.
Following the ceremony, there will be refreshments, children’s games and a first aid demonstration.
It was so pleasing to see everyone this morning for our inaugural Children’s Fun Run to support the foundation of the Pinner Junior Parkrun. We had a huge number of attendees, who were all just as excited as we were to see everyone out and enjoying the park.
We were even lucky with the weather, as there were only a few spots of rain as the runners set off around the two-kilometre course. A huge thank you to everyone who attended, as well as the ongoing support of running club Metros and the Pinner Rotary Club who lent us the equipment to put on today’s event.
It was also great to hear feedback from parents who were keen for us to start up the Junior Parkrun so that we can do this every Sunday. We are thankful for their donations at the event, and a few suggested that we put out a donation link. So if you’d like to donate to the efforts to bring a Parkrun to Pinner Village Gardens, then you can do so via PayPal with this button:
With thanks to the Facebook Group “Harrow – Old Views“, we recently discovered a photograph of the rose circle near the Whittington Way entrance which was taken in 1976. This is the only photograph we have of the old Elm Trees that used to stand in Pinner Village Gardens, as they were removed the following year because of Dutch Elm Disease.
Another thing to note is the absence of Compton Copse, which was subsequently added to the western edge of the ridge and furrow field. With modern technology, you can directly compare the photograph below, with that of the park at the moment. Simply use the scroller on the image from left to right to take a look at the differences in the park across more than four decades.
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