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- Asda
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- Communities and Local Government
Head down to Trafalgar Square on Friday 1st October where The International Flower Bulb Centre, The Eden Project and Rotary International will be joining forces to launch the nationwide BIG BULB PLANT campaign and celebrating the Thanks for Life campaign to End Polio.
An educational and fun filled day will be taking place from 10.30am to 2pm and free bulbs will be given out for you to take home to encourage your friends, family and community to get planting.
No previous garden experience necessary…
Toby Buckland, the British gardener, author and BBC Gardeners’ World presenter will be showing the audience how to plant bulbs and letting us in on all his handy hints and tips at 12 noon. Chris Collins, the Blue Peter gardener will also be on hand to show that gardening and planting bulbs isn’t just for adults and can be fun for kids too! And, as if that wasn’t enough, The Eden Project horticultural team will also be around to answer your gardening and bulb planting questions all day.
This year’s BIG BULB PLANT has partnered with Rotary International, in support of their Thanks for Life campaign to eradicate polio. Rotary clubs are aiming to set a World Record and support THE BIG BULB PLANT by approaching local societies and schools, encouraging them to take part by planting the most bulbs in one go. Free boxes of crocus ‘Ruby Giant’ bulbs will be given away in Trafalgar Square to members of the public who come along to take home and plant, either in their own gardens or in the community. The vibrant Ruby Giant is significant as it matches the colour used to dye children’s little fingers once they have been immunised against polio.
Come and get involved, pick up some free bulbs and find out more about the Thanks for Life campaign on Friday 1st October in Trafalgar Square.
On Sunday 18th July, we sent our team out to 10 locations across the country to capture The Big Lunch in action. We managed to see a fancy dress fashion show in Glasgow, tuck into a hog roast in Kent and catch Boris Johnson and Barbara Winsor scoffing cake in London. To see all this and a round up of The Big Lunch in the news, check out our official 2010 Show Reel:
4-8 October is liftshare Week. If you haven’t tried car-sharing before, this is your chance to join literally thousands of others around the UK in giving it a go.
The typical commuter who car-shares every day sees a huge impact both on their wallet and on their carbon footprint – saving on average about £800 and a tonne of CO2 in a year. But – as with The Big Lunch – community and friendship is at the heart of liftsharing. But don’t just take our word for it:
“As a result of sharing with four complete strangers, I also managed to make four great friends who I still keep in contact with today”. Olly, Edinburgh
“I made one of my best friends through car-sharing!” Emily, Oxfordshire
Meanwhile, Clare in Hereford picks up and drops off a regular prescription for her car-sharer’s friend who’s retired and finds it difficult to get to the doctor’s, while Emma only got to know Swindon and all that it offered once she started car-sharing – learning about everything from local car boot sales to the best pick-your-own farms.
So as you wait for next year’s Big Lunch to come around, keep the community spirit alive by finding other people in your area to share your journeys. You can take turns driving, or if you don’t have a car yourself then you can just contribute to the fuel costs of the journey.
To find yourself a car-sharer, just go to the free website (And if you’re allowed to spread the word at work by sticking some posters up at your office, you can download them here!)
On Sunday 18th July this year we asked you to sit down with your neighbours for a Big Lunch. To keep the ball rolling this autumn, we’d like to ask you to get your street together once more, this time to plant bulbs in your community.
We want you and your neighbours to work together, have fun and plant spring bulbs to give your surroundings a makeover.
Plant bulbs in every front garden on your street, or in window boxes or in a container on the doorstep – there are so many options and each will uplift the look of your street!
Click here to find out more
The Big Bulb Plant
The first 20 people to register will receive 250 free bulbs to start the bulb planting off!
This year The Big Bulb Plant is also working with Rotary International in Great Britain & Ireland (RIBI), in support of its Thanks for Life campaign to eradicate polio. To help raise awareness of the need for a final push to eradicate polio, we are encouraging people to plant purple crocus bulbs. The purple colour denotes the colour of the dye that is dabbed on a child’s little finger once they have been immunised.
We want you to plant spring bulbs any time during Autumn to brighten up your neighbourhood! A nationwide bulb planting will take place on 2nd October 2010. The ‘Ruby Giant’ crocus will be planted in gardens, parks, schools and communities across the country – so that they can take centre stage when blooming on Rotary Day, 23rd February 2011.
In addition, the project, called Focus On The Crocus, will look to set a new bulb planting Guinness World Record. Supporting The Big Bulb Plant and working in partnership with the National Trust, Learning Through Landscape, Groundwork and others, Rotary clubs are approaching public authorities, local societies and schools, to encourage them to take the challenge by planting the most bulbs in one hour at individual sites. For planting opportunities, get in touch with your local Rotary club .
The planting of spring flowering bulbs will make a huge difference and transform the aesthetics of the community come spring time!
Spring bulb planting can take place any time between 1st September and 30th November – so why not get your hands dirty and plant some bulbs?
A Big thanks to all those that have filled in our survey, sent in photos and helped to feed Shaun the Sheep’s flock – some fantastic competition prizes are now on the way to lots of lucky Lunchers around the country. Congratulations to Derek Clarke, the winner of our photo competition in association with Food Network UK for the Best Big Lunch Dish. He created this gingerbread masterpiece – an edible Big Lunch street complete with table, food and guests. Far too good to eat, I’m sure you’ll agree!
Photo Credit: Tim Longman
And the prize for the Best Dressed Big Lunch goes to Scratton road in Stanford-Le-Hope, Essex (photos courtesy of Mandie Groves from no.49)for not only dressing up their street, their houses and themselves but for also getting creative with their wheelie bins!
Photo credit: River Cottage
Our friends at Landshare have sparked a nationwide revolution over the last year and are about to go even further in the iPhone app community.
There are currently 2 growers to every 1 plot offered and the new app from River Cottage is set to empower the public to take action!
The new features use app functionality at its best:
The app also gives users direct access to the core Landshare tools – extending its ability to match growers to land, through a postcode driven map and listing database, and more. Already, Landshare has seen more than 3,000 acres of land offered and matched in every region of the UK. It has been cited by the House of Lords, New Local Government Network, the international Wikinomics team and most recently – the Food Ethics Council – as changing the landscape in food accessibility and security.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall spearheads Landshare and says of the new App:
“Landshare has always been, literally, a ground-breaking initiative but now it’s set to really push the agenda. We know there are 100,000 people on council waiting lists for allotments in England alone, with up to 40 year waits, plus a significant amount of waiting lists that are actually closed! This app will ensure that councils can no longer shut the door to their legal duty to provide. Landshare has been at the forefront of the debate on land use and accessibility – it is unacceptable to say that the land is not available because most of us pass derelict land in our travels every day. By bringing attention to the scale of space that is already on our doorsteps with “LandSpot”, we hope to help enable this potential to be realised and for much more land to be made fertile.”
The Landshare app launched on 6th August 2010 and can be downloaded free at www.landshare.net/iphoneapp
Users without iPhones can also engage in the new tools at http://www.landshare.net/
Big Jubilee Lunch 2012, an Eden Project
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