Digging a New Community Flower Bed

 To give the bed its proper title, it will be a Sustainably Planted Community Memorial Bed. OTRA Gardeners were recently given a donation for plants for a new flower bed to commemorate the 70 years Queen Elizabeth II spent on the throne. There was much discussion about how this should be done, we could have replanted one of the existing beds with new plants but have spent 10 years developing most of the beds, and it seemed a shame to disrupt them. We considered various sites and decided to opt for a site to the left of the one already by the Marriott Hotel, but before putting a spade into the group, we needed to look at the utility cables beneath the ground, looking at the maps revealed there were several different services under the plot chosen. We were able to plan to relocate the garden where there didn't appear to be any services, and this morning met Steve, South Swindon Parish Council contractor with a CAT scanner, stands for cable avoidance tool, to double check for cables:

It's just as well Steve did double check; it seems there's an electricity cable going from a streetlamp beside Marlborough Road across the grass to one by the Marriott roundabout, we now have a third site for the bed where there are no cables, it's quite close to the path, but will be easily seen by passers-by and motorists.

This is the first site we considered, to the left of the other bed, but it's riddled with cables.

Above, the second site was around the rewilding sign

Steve was cutting the grass to mark out where the bed would go, however we soon found this wasn't going to be possible to dig that site, so we now have flower bed position mark 3 where will dig a new bed on Sunday 20 November from 10am.

Please come and help or come for a chat on Sunday morning, be great to see a few people offering support. Judith has promised to bring some of her famous flapjacks to eat after we've done a bit of work.