Epping in Bloom news

The summer displays have been spectacular this year in the community garden and the regular positive feedback we have been receiving from our visitors and passers by has been very heart warming and rewarding. We received £1000 in sponsorship from Epping Town Council and have started receiving sponsorship from local businesses. We welcome our newest sponsors; Collops Carpets and Church’s Butchers. In the raised beds and pots in the garden we planted a wide variety of begonia and salvias in many colours. The barrels outside the fire station have been lovingly cared for by Eileen and Gaynor, who have been weeding and feeding the plants often. We are really enjoying being back together again as a voluntary group on Friday mornings and welcome any new volunteers to come along to join in with the gardening fun at 10am. No experience needed. We love talking to our visitors and often answer any gardening questions. If you just want to pop in for a friendly chat you will always be made to feel welcome. We said goodbye to our lovely volunteer Gema who has moved away. She has done so much to help us over the past 4 years. We shall look forward to seeing her soon.

We have had a challenging fruit and vegetable growing year on our allotment at Meadow Road. Many of our crops were wiped out early on due to slug and snail damage. Never before have the tops on our onions, shallots and even our garlic been munched away! Our sweetcorns were damaged, along with our runner beans, to name a few more. Despite that, we had a great result with our Turks turba squashes, courgettes, strawberries and crooked neck squashes. Many of the plants we had this year were donated from Herts and Essex community farm. In August, we held a special evening educating the girl guides and their leaders about our no-dig style of self sustainable growing methods on the Epping in Bloom plot. We set ‘taste the difference’ challenges and had pancakes. We shall look forward to welcoming them over to the plot again next year.

North Weald Airfield information

North Weald Airfield is an historic airfield owned and managed by Epping Forest District Council. It continues to be developed for aviation and commercial purposes to secure its future survival and prevent it being lost, as so many airfields have been, to housing development. This is a welcome vision for the area. As part of this continuing growth there are several flight schools operating from the airfield, offering training for pilots through courses which include up to 35 hours of flying time, and involve circuits of the airfield and take-off/landing practice. The training aircraft have a designated route around the airfield and are instructed to stay clear of residential areas in order to avoid objections about continuous, frequent and repetitive overflying, leading to noise disturbance. The flight circuit is illustrated by the blue line on the image and comes from the airfield’s Pilot Handbook, which is available online. Any complaints about aircraft wandering from the correct circuit and over residential areas should be directed to the Control Tower on 01992 524740 or The Gatehouse on 01992 564200 (including weekends). The Metropolitan Police helicopters have now returned to their original base at Lippets Hill.