If we don’t do it who will?
Welcome to our latest news article filled with interesting information to some, and complete drivel to others, that’s life.
Parks bring calm, nature provides happiness and talking to others makes us all smile. Solution - Go chill in your local park, join a park group, meet the locals, and enjoy nature, even litter picking gives you a nice inner happiness, with a twisted frustration at others being so very lazy and leaving litter everywhere.
We are constantly using the words massive, awesome, thank you and amazing, amongst others. With each word we are trying to articulate how much we appreciate the amazing people who do an awesome job at making a massive difference to our park and area; a place we all enjoy.
The Friends of Harrow Weald believe that parks make the very best community centres, and offer a unique opportunity to create tomorrow's parks today, using a convergence of nature, technology, recycling, education and wellbeing for humans and bugs alike.
Ways to get involved and volunteer
Create park donations by recyling
A note for one of our business supporters
Start planning for your community apple juice. If you have any spare apples, why not support your local park group and recycle at the same time?
Event News
FOR FULL DETAILS PLEASE CHECK OUR EVENTS PAGE ONLINE.
The second Harrow Weald Festival is back!
There will be more opportunities to enjoy artistic activities in the park on Saturday 4th June from 12 noon until 6pm, when the second Harrow Weald Festival, and celebration of HM The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, takes place.
Arts and craft stalls and an art workshop hosted by Harrow Art Society are featured, as well as face painting and the opportunity for children to make their own crown. Indeed, parents and friends can show their creativity in transforming local children into the best King or Queen for the fancy dress competition, which takes place in the park at 3pm.
You might like to bring your dog along to take part in the ever popular dog show, which has many categories, including, best puppy, veteran, pedigree and non-pedigree. We haven’t forgotten the charmers amongst our furry friends either, and included are the most beautiful bitch, handsome dog and even the one with the waggiest tail, or best skills at catching a ball. Enrol in the park, on the day, from 11.30am.
The fun continues with fairground rides for the children, football and Tai Chi demonstrations, as well the opportunity to try bowling on the excellent green of the Harrow Weald Bowling Club, in the centre of the park. Members of the club will be there to offer advice to anyone interested in joining the group, or in testing their skills.
DJ Donald Bunting will be providing excellent music and the ParkLife Café will continue the celebrations after 6pm. For full and up to date information visit the events section of our website.
Social Marketing
What is social marketing and why is it different from normal marketing?
Social marketing offers a great way to support local communities, whilst providing your business with a host of marketing benefits
Could your business help turn parks into centres for the community that provide wellbeing for nature, bugs, and humans alike, with education and financial sustainability running through everything?
The Friends of Harrow Weald are a registered charity and are always delighted when businesses active in our local community see the value of what we are doing. Not only do they support us with advice and help, but by advertising and providing much needed sponsorship money for events and projects.
Could you support us and find that warm glow of inner happiness by knowing you’ve done something good!? Splash some cash and find the benefits!
WE WOULD LIKE TO WELCOME AND THANK IRVIN LEISURE
Irvin Leisure are a brilliant London based business, who have been running for over 170 years – yes that long!
They still uphold the great traditions of British funfairs and are always to be relied on for making sure events are safe, and full of fun. Whether you choose to hire Irvin’s fairground rides for a children’s party, fete, celebration, or business event, you will be in the great company of businesses such as Microsoft, BMW, Saatchi, the BBC and ITV, as well as Buckingham Palace, who chose Irvin’s to run their Millenium Fair.
Irvin’s are fully insured and have a great reputation for reliability. Contact them for film props, ice rinks, funfairs and even a great historic Albion army vehicle which was returned to the family’s care just recently. The updated vehicle was unveiled at Hampton Court earlier this year.
Find out how Social marketing is good for your business
Project updates
Litter picking project
"If we don't collectively help resolve the litter problem, who loses out?"
We have proudly supplied
Schools
Scout groups
Residents
Groups that litter pick together
Litter pickers are volunteers and residents. See the good news section to see how many bags of litter were collected and volunteers have used the reporting form
Gardening club
With the spring flowers in bloom, and tidying work continuing around the park, many people have commented on the improvements they see.
We are now helping to enable future generations to learn more about gardening and the environment through our newly created home schooling gardening group. We’re amazed and extremely pleased that enough families have now joined, and have started formulating plans and goals! If you would like to join us, please follow the link here:
This whole project is Not planned by an old person that will never see the longer-term benefits, we have children planning, children’s visions and children’s ideas, supported by adults.
The Gardening club is a major core element of creating tomorrow’s parks today. This wonderful project will be supported over time by paid experts, volunteers, and various skilled gardeners in areas of food, bugs, flora and fauna, and more, each with their own version of the right way.
The Friends launch our own version of a community training program:
With the increase in the number of people visiting the ParkLife Café, the help and commitment given by the volunteer workers has proved to be essential.
As part of our training programme, a unique convergence of nature, technology, recycling, education and wellbeing for humans and bugs alike we are therefore, delighted, to report that our first trainee has now gained her Level 1 City and Guilds Food Hygiene certificate. Congratulations from us all. We look forward to more of our great volunteers reaching this achievement!
Community partnerships
The Friends of Harrow Weald are always eager to work with our local community
- Scouts
- Local schools
- Colleges
- Park groups
- Community groups
- Community minded organisations
- Together we create communities centres in parks
Community news stories
ParkLife Cafe moves to Summer opening hours
ParkLife Update:
As we come into Summer, we would like to inform you that ParkLife café hours will be changing until September.
Full times can be found here on Google, which also offers the opportunity to review ParkLife Café
Regular updates via our newsletter.
Monday Closed
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday 10am -5pm
Thursday 10am -5pm
Friday 10am -5pm
Saturday 10am -5pm
Sunday 10am -5pm
These time changes are due to the summer events schedule, The Harrow Weald Festival, bookings, and the need to ensure our volunteers, and team members, enjoy their days and do not feel that they are living life on a hamster wheel.
We are constantly using the words massive, awesome, thank you and amazing, amongst others. With each word we are trying to articulate how much we appreciate the amazing people who do an awesome job at making a massive difference to our park and area; a place we all enjoy.
As well as being a cosy and welcoming venue, and somewhere to enjoy a drink, meal or snack, when visiting the area of Harrow Weald Recreation Ground, The ParkLife Café, has now expanded to become a place to go to appreciate creations by local artists.
OFF THE WALL - A ROTATING EXHIBITION OF LOCAL ARTISTS
The first art exhibition took place on 25th May, in conjunction with the Harrow Art Society, and was very well attended. Indeed, three art works were sold on the opening day. The work will remain in the café, for all to enjoy, until it is replaced with another great set of visual creations on 25th June, and every following two months.
LOCAL ARTS JOIN IN
All are welcome to offer their work for display, but this will be vetted by a committee, who will make the final selection of artwork. This allows for a variety, and suitable standard of work to be shown, for the enjoyment of the community.
If you would like to apply to display and sell your work as part of the café exhibition, please complete the necessary form, using this link:
Buy Manfredonica Coffee
Manfredonica coffee offers you a blend of two rich flavours, making it incredibly flexible for all cafe drinks and iced drinks.
It offers a strong and intense flavour with a separate sweet crème.
Aroma and taste: Strong, persistent.
Crème: Strong, with sweet retro taste.
PURCHASE - ONLINE
PICK UP AT PARKLIFE CAFE
Ways to get involved and volunteer Ways to get involved and volunteer
We really welcome your help, your energy, and, more importantly, your personality. We thrive and grow on getting involved with others.
So what do we do? We are generally busy organising nice "things" around Harrow Weald, Harrow, The Wealds and the general area. (Note that to classify all of the "things" we do would make a very, very long read!)
Our park is a community centre with a hive of "things" going on Find our more
Recycling Apples - A great way to help your local parks
Donating Apples again
Each year many fully grown apples fall from our trees and are wasted. But this does not need to be the case. Our community group will arrange to collect these apples from the local area and turn them into our community apple juice. This bottled apple juice is then sold from our online charity shop, or can be collected from the park, or ParkLife Café.
Park groups in Harrow
We have secured the use of an apple press within Harrow, that is available to all park groups to use to create donations for your park. If you are part of a park group in Harrow and would like to create and sell your own apple juice, please contact us for any help required. You can start the ball rolling now by asking your park users about donating their unwanted apples.
Harrow was once a vast orchard of many different apple trees, each with their own variety and taste. We think that our own apple juice tastes amazing, but what could your area produce? Perhaps in 2023 we can run a Harrow apple day competition!
Volunteer
We really welcome your help, your energy, and, more importantly, your personality. We thrive and grow on getting involved with others.
So what do we do? We are generally busy organising nice "things" around Harrow Weald, Harrow, The Wealds and the general area. (Note that to classify all of the "things" we do would make a very, very long read!)
Our park is a community centre with a hive of "things" going on Find our more
Ways to support online:
You’ll get the same Amazon products, the same Amazon low prices, and the same Amazon service. You shop, same products, same prices, same service. Amazon will donate 0.5% of the sale to us. All you have to do is select The Friends of Harrow Weald as your preferred charity at www.smile.amazon.co.uk.
Here’s how to do it:
Log in to your normal Amazon account but through smile.amazon.co.uk
Select The Friends of Harrow Weald as your chosen charity
Whenever you purchase through the smile.amazon.co.uk site, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the total directly to us!
Right now, this is only available through your web browser and not available through the Amazon app. But we’ll keep you posted if this changes.
…...................... at no extra cost to you!
Do you buy or sell on eBay? Then you might like to know that you can support The Friends of Harrow Weald through eBay, too.
Thanks to eBay for charity you can raise more money for The Friends of Harrow Weald. Every time you make a transaction – whether buying or selling – you can help improve lives.
Buyers can shop for a bargain knowing they are supporting us and sellers can choose to donate between 10 and 100 per cent of a final sale price to help fund building Community projects.
If you’d like to support us every time you buy or sell, all you have to do is to ‘favourite’ us as your chosen charity on eBay.
Grants can be difficult to write. Can you help us to write grant applications?
Your support helps:
Projects: With over 20 different community projects planned and underway, supporting nature, bugs and humans alike, whilst reaching beyond the park gates, helping others in happy ways!
Community minded inclusive events, nature, technology, wellbeing for bugs and humans alike.
Litter picking is one of our community partnership initiatives: Supplying and supporting litter picking equipment around Harrow in partnership with Harrow Council.
SmartPark community project is one of our community partnership initiatives:
ParkLife Cafe: A local community asset to help fund park and community activities.
It would be impossible to list how much supporters, volunteers and donations make a difference.
If we don't do it who will?
We really welcome your help, your energy, and, more importantly, your personality. We thrive and grow on getting involved with others.
So what do we do? We are generally busy organising nice "things" around Harrow Weald, Harrow, The Wealds and the general area. (Note that to classify all of the "things" we do would make a very, very long read!)
Our park is a community centre with a hive of "things" going on
We are very lucky and grateful for the local support and donations that we already receive, but further donations of time, money, and goods, will enable us to do so much more.
Click here to see what materials and items we need
Good news stories
LITTER PICKING UPDATE:
Many community members, volunteers and kind people around Harrow are constantly striving to keep our parks and streets free from the scourge of litter ALL OVER HARROW.
Litter picking equipment is available from the ParkLife Café. If you would like to get involved, please record on the website the number of bags of litter that you have collected, or the problems you have reported:
At last count
1,183 people throughout Harrow reported that they had spent over 900 hours on litter picking and had collected 3,069 bags of rubbish in partnership with the Green Team. People have also reported the location of 478 fly tips. THIS IS ONLY THE PEOPLE THAT RECORD BAGS COLLECTED. Some of our own superhero litter pickers do not know what the Internet is, or how to use it.
All of this obviously makes a great improvement to our local area.
Become an equipment distribution hub - for Park Groups, Community groups, businesses
FREE GARDEN NUTRIENTS:
Don’t forget to use any coffee grounds that you have at home to improve your garden, or even, where suitable, to distribute in the park. If you’re not a coffee drinker, or don’t have sufficient coffee grounds to make a difference, just visit the ParkLife Café where you will be welcome to collect free coffee grounds on a regular basis. Just bring a suitable container along and take the coffee grounds away, or use one of our recycled reusable bottles. Doing this will also support our recycling aims.
Acid loving plants such as hydrangeas, rhododendrons, azaleas, blueberries, carrots, radishes, and more, thrive on the benefits of coffee grounds mixed into the soil. The grounds add organic matter, so improving drainage and aeration. They are also very good for controlling pests.
WE HAVE SEEN THE SIGNS!
Another enhancement that we will soon be seeing in the park, is the installation of several new and informative signs at the park entrance close to the café, at the junction of Boxtree Road and Lane, and in the main car park. This is something The Friends have hoped for and is another step forward in achieving our aims. Thank you to all the nice people that helped us all to now have clear guidance.
And Finally
It is impossible to mention all the good people we all have the pleasure to meet daily
The daily litter pickers, the weekly meetup people, the organisers, dog walkers, park strollers, the volunteers who go to regular local meetings with other organisations to help keep us all informed, and the people that just help.
Without talking nothing would happen, without goodwill it would be hard, without cooperation it would be impossible.
Thank you to all of the people who make our area nicer on so many levels.
We thought it would be fun to create a small timeline to help us all understand how moving mountains, and litter, has made such a difference to our park and area.
