As well as looking after specific areas of Holy Trinity Church Peace Garden, Millennium Park and King George Sensory Garden as mentioned in the summer issue, our volunteers have been looking after the area now known as Riverside View for a few years. Riverside View is the green patch of land between the lights at Barrow Bridge, the entrance to Proctors Park and the River Soar. It is owned by Charnwood Borough Council and the trees and grassed areas are maintained by idverde. It was transformed in June 2022 with the help of our volunteers alongside many small local businesses. Please read the article in Barrow Voice Summer 2023 for the details of how David Batey and Rossy Cotton helped to bring the suppliers together to provide the materials and manpower.
We continue to make small improvements each year, either with bulb planting in the grassed areas; new shrubs in the copsed area by the bridge; or by removing the huge mass of brambles and nettles in front of the memorial bench with a new garden area full of British native shrubs and wildfowers. This year, again with the help of David and other local suppliers, we have resurfaced the pathways and added a new planter behind the memorial bench.
We have a team of volunteers who take turns watering the planters each week between May and September: Bill Hinds, Andrew Willis, Catherine and Robert Holmes, Honor and Mike Neale, Pat and John Moore, Julie Binch, Anne Freestone, Barbara and Bob Bellamy. This year we received a generous donation from Barrow Conservative Club to refresh the planters with a mixture of new perennial and annual plants - many thanks to Daz, Nathan and Dani for your support.
Charnwood Borough Council, working alongside its partners Serco and idverde, are pleased to support Barrow in Bloom volunteers at Riverside View and other areas within the wider village environment.
Deep Lock has been looked after by our volunteers under a partner group scheme with The Canal and River Trust since spring 2021. The area was transformed with new wooden planters, replacing old random plastic containers of all shapes, sizes and colours, and Brian and Karen Libby now maintain the area all year round. Improvements are made each year; in 2023, working alongside volunteers from the Canal & River Trust Loughborough Towpath Taskforce Team, we resurfaced the towpath in front of Deep Lock as it had become incredibly muddy and slippery in the winter months. In 2024 we expanded the garden area to include a new and vibrant daffodil display, and this year Karen and Brian, alongside Nick Thomas, replaced the old wooden planters using recycled and donated materials.
Deep Lock is part of a 42km length of riverside running from the north of Loughborough to the south of Leicester that won the Green Flag Award in 2025 for the fourth year running and this is down to the hard work of our wider team of volunteers who regularly cut back overgrown vegetation along the towpaths covering the length of our village up to Pillings Lock; litter pick through the year; and resurface the towpaths - usually any amount between two and four tonnes of grano material each year using only hand tools and wheelbarrows. Our volunteers are also helping to clear away non-native invasive plant species such as Pennywort and Himalayan Balsam from our waterways. Lots of hard work carried out by lots of dedicated volunteers.
The Regional Director of the Canal & River Trust (also a village resident) has the following words to say: “as a charity, the Canal & River Trust depends on the goodwill and hard work of volunteers across the country. Barrow in Bloom stands out as an exceptional partner group whose members do so much to care for the waterway, towpaths and many other areas of the village. The Canal & River Trust is extremely grateful to the group and their enormous contribution to creating a wonderful environment for locals and visitors to enjoy.”
Annette Richardson