Join our Remembrance Sunday Work Party
On Sunday 10th November we will be holding our customary Remembrance Sunday work party and observation of two minutes silence at the Barnes Old Cemetery on the Common at Rocks Lane. This year the work party and remembrance will be led by our Chair, Mike Hildesley, and it will be a chance to meet Jessica […]
Summer Update on Reedbeds, Meadows and the Orchard
Anyone walking onto the Common late in July can hardly have missed the large construction equipment busy at work on our new reedbeds. It is always a heart stopping moment when large machinery arrives on site, but the contractors have done a great job, damage has been minimal and we not only have two new […]
Do You Have A Valuable Tree?
With a successful grant from the Rewild Fund, we are continuing our survey and practical habitat management to help saproxylic invertebrates. Saproxylic invertebrates are those that rely on decaying wood for at least part of their life cycle, this habitat can be found on both living and dead trees. In the UK there are over […]
New Reedbeds Planned for Barnes Common
You may have noticed that the reedbed on Barnes Common is heaving with life right now as myriad male birds, including Black Caps, Chiff Chaffs, Great, Blue and Long-tailed Tits, Robins and the vocally brilliant, Schedule 1 listed Cetti’s Warblers are using it to attract females. Larger reedbeds, such as at The London Wetland Centre […]
The Food Waste to Fungi Project
6 December 2023 — Our Growing Project and the Vine Road Community Cafe are working together to reduce waste. We are using the coffee grounds from the community cafe as a substrate to grow edible oyster mushrooms. The coffee is mixed with mushroom spawn at a ratio of 10:1 in plastic bags. These will now […]
July News From the Growing Project
We are delighted to announce that our water catchment system has now been installed! This was made possible due to generous funding from Richmond Parish Lands Charity. Recent years have seen increasingly extreme weather, with very heavy downpours followed by long periods of drought. These conditions have been challenging for all growers, and the need […]
Our Community Growing Project Becomes Water-Wise
As we reach the end of May, and temperatures creep up, the Community Growing Project at Vine Road is really bursting into life. Bees circle the gorgeous display of flowers, and each week more seedlings are transplanted into the raised beds, which look fuller and more abundant every day. The Growing Project uses methods that […]
The Story of Barnes Yard and the Barker Family
Thank you for coming to our Wassail!
Sending a big thank you to all the people who helped make this happen: our lovely volunteers and cake bakers; Ellie from Wood Wool Willow; the fantastic Age UK Richmond Patch Ukulele Band; and the amazing wassail master James Lloyd Pegg and his Minstrel, Joe. Now that our young trees in the orchard have been […]
Our Community Growing Project is Growing
The projects will include further developing our work with young people and our educational offering to the general public; as well as extending our food donations to families-in-need via the Richmond Foodbank Network. Sharing produce with local foodbanks was one of the key projects for 2022. At the start of the year, we set out […]