Last Tuesday the Biodiversity Gardens project held its ‘End of Project Celebration’ event to celebrate its 2 years of success in promoting biodiversity in Sutton’s green spaces. The celebrations were held at the historical venue of Carshalton Water Tower and included a series of short talks about the projects achievements followed by a tasty buffet spread of meats, cheeses, salad dishes and cakes. The evening offered the chance for all people involved in the project to get together and give themselves a big pat on the back for all the hard work that has gone into Biodiversity Gardens as well as socialise with people who have been involved in different parts of the projet.
The project has certainly had a huge presence within the council’s Biodiversity Team and the name ‘Biodiversity Gardens’ will surely continue to resound in our minds….if not only because its name is printed on the oyster card holders and calendars we use! Of course we have Anna Parry the former Project Officer to thank for this catchy name……..and for pretty much all of the projects achievements for that matter! Anna worked on the project for almost 2 years and her friendly personality and assertive nature made her the ideal person for the job. Nicknamed by members of the Biodiversity Team as ‘The Goth’, Anna will always be remembered alongside Biodiversity Gardens.

Anna

Anna Parry, Biodiversity Gardens Project Officer

All is not quite lost though…one of the jobs still left to do before the project’s grant runs out is to compose an evaluation report ‘telling the story’ of Biodiversity Gardens so that the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) can assess whether the project has sufficiently met its aims. Given this will be quite a nice summary highlighting the projects achievements I thought this may be useful to have available on this site for people to download and read if they wish. It would be a shame if the project lost its complete presence on the site so this way the achievements of the project will not be forgotten about and the document will be available for people to use and learn from. So watch this space for further info of the project to come. On a similar subject, the project’s social media accounts (facebook, twitter) will be closing on 24th January.
So you may wonder what changes now? Although the council won’t be offering exactly the same services as the project did, the Biodiversity Team at the London Borough of Sutton will be carrying on with their usual job of conserving Sutton’s wildlife so if there is anything you need or need to find out then you are welcome to send all enquiries to our team’s email address biodiversity@sutton.gov.uk . If you are seeking volunteering opportunities then the Sutton Nature Conservation Volunteers (SNCV) offer experience in the practical management of nature reserves as well office-based work such as blogging and submitting records.
As for training courses…following the huge success of the ‘Beginners Courses’ ran by the project this year, the council have decided to repeat some of them again in 2014 with a few additional courses on dragonflies, butterflies and winter tree ID! So be sure to watch out for upcoming events on the Events tab. Without the funding from the project there will now be a small charge to attend (£10)…but still amazing value for money! 
I also still have my job here amongst the Biodiversity Team (for now) so if there is anything you would like to ask me about the project then please feel free to pop me an email (robin.searle@sutton.gov.uk) or give me a call (02087705818).
Finally, Biodiversity Gardens would like to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and happy new year!
xmas robin
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Searle, Biodiversity Project Officer.



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