Category: Gardening

National ‘Make a difference day’

Make a Difference Day today...to celebrate volunteers and what they bring to their community.
The Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery would like to highlight all the volunteers that give their time in the cemetery. Yes, it helps the overall look of the cemetery but you all do so much more for each others mental health and physical wellbeing. A win win all round.
Also a shout out to those that follow our facebook site and jump to help others with queries, searching for graves etc. Well done to all of you and we hope you get as much reward from your interactions as all of the FBEC Committee do. Keep doing what you are doing.
Here are just a few of our volunteer groups but there are many more who help us in Brandwood End Cemetery:
Grave Gardeners
Corporate ‘grave clearing’ volunteers
Poppy Crossers
Tree Guardians
Headstone photographers
Data base champians
Researchers
Civilian Garden maintainers
Litter Pickers
Committee members
………. and many others who help as and when they can with whatever needs doing.
PLEASE KEEP ON DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND THANK YOU ALL.

Deutsche Bank Volunteers at work again.

Lovely weather welcomed 10 enthusiastic staff from Deutsche Bank to the cemetery to carry on with our ‘Grave shrubbery’ project.

In our 20th year we aimed to clear all the shrubbery from Section 16 and photograph all the headstones for our data base. This year we continue to extend that project to another section, B12.

Ten members of staff spent all day clearing ground level Brambles and Holly and managed to uncover several rows of previously obscured graves that hadn’t been accessible for many years. if you want to see some before and after shots then follow this link to our album.

Tree Guardians.

Most of our followers will know that we have been planting trees this year to replace those lost in storms and through age. Our initial planting was with Fruit and nut Village and we were able to plant a small fruit sapling tree area . We followed this in February with 15 larger standard trees, all of which were special in their own way and complimented the existing planting designed by Louden in the late 1800’s.

As warmer weather approaches we sent out a message on our facebook site to ask for Tree Guardians who would take on the watering of all of the trees for the remainder of this year and as long as they need it. Once again our supporters didnt let us down and very soon we formed a team of 8 who willingly adopted a couple of trees each to car for. Our thanks to them for offering their time to give these trees the best start in life.

Its March, and its Deutsche Bank working in the cemetery.

Nine Deutsche Bank staff joined us for the day to do some shrubbery clearance on Section 18.  The weather didn’t look too bright but everyone agreed that the temperature was just right for the hard work they were undertaking. Thanks again for Steve D, Steve E and Kay for supporting the visit. A special thank you to a Deutsche Bank staff member who treated us all to pizza for lunch.

Lots of areas cleared today and lots of photographs via this link.

20th Anniversary Tree Plant.

Many of our followers will know that FBEC are coming to the end of their 20th year and during that time we have been undertaking a number of special projects. One of our main objectives was to raise funds to purchase 15 large standard trees to begin to replace the mature trees in the cemetery that were lost in recent storms.

 

  

On Monday the 9th February, after a lot of planning, we arrived at our ‘special’ day when several groups got together to finally plant the trees we had purchase.

Our lead planters would be 13 pupils from St Albans RC Primary School and they would be assisted by Birmingham Tree People, Deutsche Bank staff, RLB staff, Gardening Volunteers and FBEC Committee members.

Very soon they had planted seven large trees, that dwarfed many of their planters! A really good mornings work. A huge thank you to the pupils who all showed such enthusiasm and worked really hard to dig out the holes and then place the trees  (With adult help) and finally backfill and stamp the soil down ready for a top dressing of chippings.  Several worms were rescued during this process and relocated by pupils to safer areas!

To see more photos follow this link.

Well done to all concerned.

We have many people to thank:

The Staff and pupils of St Albans RC Primary School

Steve Flood, a City Tree Officer for helping choose the trees and their sites and facilitating their transportation across the City to Brandwood End.

Bereavement Services and Gary Humphries, a member of the ground Staff,  who went above and beyond moving heavy trees, digging initial holes, delivering good quality soil and chippings for backfilling and generally helping facilitate the children’s activities.

Matt and Birmingham Tree People  who helped us order the trees and supported us with their team on site, as well as sharing their tree knowledge with FBEC and the pupils.

FBEC Committee and our Gardening Volunteers, Deutsche Bank staff and RLB staff.

The Patrick Trust and all the individual contributors who helped finance the Trees.