(1) Wildflowers. Great news, last week with the brilliant help of the Ashworth Hospital Gardeners we prepared and laid the wildflower turf courtesy of a 10% discount from Allturf, and should look magnificent alongside the spring flowering bulb borders in 2021. We surrounded the wildflower turf with creosoted stakes courtesy of free recycled timber from Barney Rubbles, to enable the ground maintenance team (Spacecare) to distinguish between the normal grass and wildflower turf, as it only requires cutting once a year. It is the ideal time to lay the wildflower turf with sufficiently moist weather to establish itself before the winter frost. Following the weeding this week, we are hoping to provide another layer of wood chippings to be spread over the three borders, over the next fortnight, courtesy of Paul Richards (Tree Surgeon). (2) Recycling Rhinoceros Sculpture. Following a similar delay due to pandemic restrictions. Chris Butler (Castle Foundry Director) has utilised a small rhinoceros model (pictured) and had it 3-D printed into a slightly larger model, before using a technology to accurately project a life-size model to create the galvanised mesh steel sculpture, with suitable holes at the top to insert the bottle tops and a trap door the bottom to release the bottle tops when required. Chris is hopeful that we may be able to install the sculpture in October/November, with a suitable plinth area. (3) The noticeboard, once we have an idea of how much money will be available following the above work, we will then order and install this item hopefully by the end of the year. Thank you once again for all your support, kind comments and interest whilst we have been working on Stafford Moreton Way, it has been really appreciated. The Next Project 2020 – at Woodend/Bobby’s Wood, near the junction of Liverpool Road South and Northway, has now been magnificently crowdfunding since April and will complete at the end of October. We have only 3% (£604) of our target to achieve and will really benefit from any support you feel able to provide. Information and how to donate can be found at www.spacehive.com/woodend, local community survey results, Q&A, Information Sheet at http://www.maghull-tc.gov.uk/news, and contact at Woodendcwp@gmail.com Many Thanks to Everyone, you have been unbelievable at such a challenging time.

Delayed Wildflowers Planted on Maghull’s Stafford Moreton Way. The successfully completed Friends of Maghull & District (FOMD) environmental crowdfunding project that raised over £6414 in 2019. Completed stage I in November by creating three borders - planting trees, bulbs, and hedging. Stage 2 involved laying wildflower turf, installing a recycling sculpture and noticeboard in April but was delayed until now. Paul Pruden (Ashworth Head Gardener) & his team (Chris, Phil, Dave) supported by FOMD stripped the turf around the November 2019 community created borders on Stafford Moreton Way, and laid the April 2020 Covid postponed 102 m² of crowd funded wildflower turf. We recycled the old turf by laying it on the sparse borders and car damaged grass islands on the road side leading up to and including the medical centre car park. A lot of these areas pictured, previously had no grass at all because they had been damaged so badly. We also managed to remove some considerable fly tipping in the brambles. So hopefully the wildflowers should provide a fantastic display in spring onwards, alongside 1500 spring bulbs. LCP's ground maintenance subcontractors (Spacecare) have agreed look after the area in the future. Our community is immensely grateful to the Ashworth Hospital Gardeners Team for honouring their invaluable support, following the April postponement, particularly during their incredibly busy work schedule. Thank you also to Allturf (1) for the 10% discount and Barnie Rubbles (2) for the free recycled timber for the marker stakes. FOMD previously tidied up Stafford Moreton Way: weeded all the borders, removed vegetation from roadside gullies, edged all borders and pavements. For all those brilliant people still collecting plastic bottle tops for the recycling rhinoceros sculpture, there has been a slight delay due to the pandemic restrictions but we are hopeful that it should be installed in October/November. More updates: www.spacehive.com/stafford-moreton Please consider our latest positively supported community crowdfunded campaign to initially provide a safe and accessible natural space at Bobby’s Wood which needs your help to achieve its last 3% (£604) of its funding target. Information and how to donate can be found at www.spacehive.com/woodend, local community survey results, Q&A, Information Sheet at http://www.maghull-tc.gov.uk/news, and contact at Woodendcwp@gmail.com Many Thanks to Everyone, you have been unbelievable at such a challenging time. (1) https://allturf.co.uk/ (2) https://www.facebook.com/barneysbargainsliverpool/

The Friends of Maghull and District previously tidied up Stafford Moreton Way: weeded all the borders, remove vegetation from roadside gullies, edged all borders and pavements. Whilst today, Paul Pruden (Ashworth Head Gardener) and his team (Chris, Phil, Dave) stripped the turf around our November 2019 community created borders on Stafford Moreton Way, in preparation for our April 2020 Covid postponed 102 m² of crowd funded wildflower turf, to be laid tomorrow. We recycled the old turf by laying it on the sparse borders and car damaged grass islands on the road side leading up to and including the medical centre car park. A lot of these areas pictured, previously had no grass at all because they had been damaged so badly. We also managed to remove some considerable fly tipping in the brambles. So hopefully the wildflowers should provide a fantastic display in spring onwards, alongside 1500 spring bulbs. For all those brilliant people still collecting plastic bottle tops for the recycling rhinoceros sculpture, there has been a slight delay due to the pandemic restrictions but we are hopeful that it should be installed in October/November. More updates: www.spacehive.com/stafford-moreton Please consider our latest successfully supported community funded campaign to initially provide a safe and accessible natural space at Bobby’s Wood which needs your help to achieve its last 3% (£604) of its funding target. Information and how to donate can be found at www.spacehive.com/woodend, local community survey results, Q&A, Information Sheet at http://www.maghull-tc.gov.uk/news, and contact at Woodendcwp@gmail.com Many Thanks to Everyone, you have been unbelievable at such challenging time.

Local children have taken two litter bins from Stafford Moreton Way and outside the Halifax Bank in Maghull and transformed them! The two bins were looking tired with rust, peeling paint and graffiti but have been transformed with wildflower art with the creative skills and generosity of staff and pupils at Maricourt and Maghull High Schools. Frank Sharp from the Friends of Maghull and District, said: "During our recently successfully completed Stafford Morton Way Wildflower Crowdfunding Project, we spotted the dejected bins (pictured) in December and explored how they could be artistically improved in theme with the project. “John Sayers, the local ward councillor and deputy Maghull Town Council leader was able to put us in touch with Gary Berwick, Head of Sefton Council’s Recycling Services). Gary was really surprised with this first time request but kindly agreed and removed and transported them. I gave the bins a hygienic soapy power wash and took them to the art departments at Maricourt and Maghull High Schools. “Mrs MacKinnon, Head of Art at Maricourt and Mrs Eborall, Head of Art at Maghull and the schoolchildren have been gradually transforming the bins into works of art for our community. This has involved preparing the surface with three coats of primer, background paint, and painting the amazing flowers. Due to the restrictions they were unable to apply the final specialised three coats of varnish to weatherproof them, so I collected them; purchased materials and Marco from Auto Spray professionally sprayed the varnish. Despite Sefton Council’s Recycling Services workload they kindly agreed to collect and reinstated the bins last week (courtesy of Dave & Stan), which as you can imagine we were all excited about, particularly on behalf of all the children and teachers. “We are really indebted to the schools not only for their creative time but for the material costs that they have generously agreed to. The smaller flowered art bin on Stafford Moreton Way was undertaken by Maricourt High School (pictured), whilst the large flowered art bin was created by Maghull High School (pictured). I really do think it will make a fantastic difference but more importantly how rightly proud will the children be.” For more updates, go to www.spacehive.com/stafford-moreton and to explore and donate to our latest crowdfunding project at Bobby’s Wood/Woodend please visit: www.spacehive.com/woodend Article link: https://www.champnews.com/papers/pdf/M2820.pdf#page=2

Our 102m² of wildflower turf was originally planned to be laid in April 2020 but due to the pandemic restrictions we had to cancel the delivery almost the day before, which was somewhat fortuitous as April and May were record dry months and could have ruined the new wildflowers. So second time lucky, we are having the wildflower turf delivered with a discount from All Turf and laid by the invaluable Ashworth Hospital Gardening Team for free, for we and the community are very indebted to for their continued kind generosity. All Turf very kindly provided a new 10% discounted charity quote for the wildflower turf. A special thank you to Fern, Christina and Hazel for all their advice, understanding and support, since we first contacted them on 17.3.19. More About All Turf. Buy premium turf online. We supply only high quality landscaping turf and specialist sports turf along with wildflower turf, wildflower seeds, grass seed & fertilisers. All Turf has been established since 2003 and we pride ourselves on deliveries a service to match our premium turf. EMAIL team@allturf.co.uk PHONE +44 (0) 1565 723 128 ADDRESS Heath Farm, Heath Lane, Knutsford. WA16 9JE

Funding- Well amazingly, after one year of crowdfunding we actually overfunded. We also concluded our cash collections which for the entire year resulted in Morrisons £626, Home Bargains £735 and the Esso petrol station £61 from their customer’s collections. We know so many countless people were involved in this which is very humbling, for which we are enormously grateful. SMW Update - we had been planning to deliver the final three components of the project in April but unfortunately we have been hampered by the national restrictions and have reluctantly made the decision to postpone the installation of the rhinoceros sculpture, noticeboard, and wildflower turf. It was really frustrating to be so close, we had actually ordered the delivery of the wildflower turf for the 2.4.20! Consequently, the wildflower turf will be re-ordered for September/October when the turf will not be exposed to excessively dry or frosty weather. Looking back over the last two record-breaking months of dry weather and sunshine, we were perhaps fortunate in not putting down the wildflower turf! The noticeboard and rhinoceros will be installed once we obtain further information from the foundry manufactures and the sign company. However, we expect to have this installed within the year. We understand that the foundry staff returned to work only this week. We expected the foundry to be focusing on their profitable work to enable them to return to a stable footing, but the director is keen to deliver this project and will provide an update next week. Fortunately, we were able to collect nine huge bin bags of plastic bottle tops from the three fantastic primary schools (Northway, Lydiate, and St Andrews). The competition between the classes in each of the primary school sounded brilliant, particularly the youngest class of proud victorious children who were the winners at their school in Lydiate Primary ('Top Class'!). Our hope is that the children can all attend the eventual unveiling and insert the bottle tops they collected, and get a real sense of ownership for their fantastic engagement. With regard to anyone else who is collecting bottle tops, I would be very grateful if you could continue collecting and saving them yourselves, until the sculpture is available. Do not worry if we have too many bottle tops as we may consider making a community mosaic picture! The Next Project 2020 – at Woodend/Bobby’s Wood, near the junction of Liverpool Road South and Northway, has now been independently verified and is currently in the crowdfunding stage and although it feels like an ambitious mountain to climb between April and the end of October, we have been really encouraged by the achievement of obtaining 56% of our target fund already mainly through in-kind offers of support. More information and how to support this project can be found at www.spacehive.com/woodend Finally, during the current lockdown period people may have noticed that whilst the bulbs were naturally dying down the surrounding grassed areas were not being maintained as normal resulting in some periods of long grass/weeds. Whilst recognising that the normal maintenance teams were unable to work we cut the grass to 3 times ourselves. We also discovered that the landowners subcontractors had changed from Marshalls to Space Care who despite their perfect maintenance of the grassed areas around Morrisons they were unaware that their responsibilities extended along Stafford Morton Way, which they remedied incredibly promptly to a very good standard. During the drought period we supported the new trees with regular watering (some on a daily basis) out of the 170 next wildlife friendly hedging trees we may have lost 10, that we will replace in November. The local canal became a helpful reservoir for our watering cans! The picture was taken by Roy Greason (professional photographer and co-founder member of our group), of SMW, for a new Maghull website at www.maghullcommunityweb.co.uk

However, they are very keen for you to look at this new project website www.spacehive.com/woodend and support it with anything above a £2 donation, it really will make a difference if we all help. Alternatively, cash can also be donated at Morrisons and Dover Road Post Office.