Please find attached the Minutes from the Friends September Meeting. There have been one or two updates in the previous week, which have been added to the Minutes.

Next Friends Meeting
Confirmed for Saturday 5th October, 2-4pm, The Garden Room at The Ardagh. Hope to see you there!

Meeting with Mary O'Connell
We had a meeting with our new Parks contact, Mary O'Connell, on Wednesday 11th September, to say hello and discuss various points around the Common (more detail in Minutes).

Cut-and-collect machine / Cutting map
Unfortunately, the funding has fallen through for the machine, so we will have to rake the meadow areas by hand again. Val and Lucy are working on getting things in place for this. Mary O'Connell has confirmed a date in the week of 23rd September - exact date tbc. (Anyone interested in helping with the physical work of the raking of the hay, please let us know!) She will be onsite with the grass cutter, so the cuts are right. She says we can then do the same again in spring. 

Second pond
Dylan has now sent plans to Mary O'Connell, so we can hear her thoughts when she's back from annual leave.

​Please find Minutes below:

Due to ongoing commitments with our co-ordinator, Lucy, the communications for the Friends group were a little behind the past two months - apologies for an inconvenience this caused.
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There was a Friends meeting on the 23rd June (a more informal meeting) and one on the 21st July - please find the minutes for both below.

FOHC had our Spring meeting! We discussed:

• Ongoing work with the cutting schedule and signs on the Common
• Upcoming event ideas and the Management Plan
• Tree walk with Ed Drewitt
• Where to promote our new poster
• And as ever the need for more volunteers! Possible volunteer roles would be a Duke of Ediburgh co-ordinator and a Fundraising Lead - if you're interested, please shout!

Date and time of our next meeting will be posted on the website/Facebook/noticeboard at the Common.

Full minutes can be found below:

FOHC had our final meeting of 2023 and discussed ongoing activities and important considerations involving the Common, including:

• Wildlife pond restoration
• Walks for next year
• Hedge-laying in January
• Promotion - poster and sharing of volunteer roles
• And crucially, the refresh of the cutting map for Horfield Common - please see the post in What's On about this and share your views before the 17th December!

Our next meeting will be late January/early February (date and time tbc)

Full minutes can be found below:

On the 14th October, volunteers joined us in the Autumn sunshine to plant daffodil bulbs around the Common.

We managed to plant almost 4 bags in the area around the car park and up by the entrance on Kellaway Avenue - we'll be looking forward to seeing them bloom in Spring!

Big thank you to Steve from The Ardagh who supplied us the bulbs and thanks so much to everyone who stopped by to help, or even just say hello and have a chat - if you'd like to meet your neighbours, please do drop by an event sometime!

FOHC met to discuss plans for the next few months and ongoing points of interest.

These included:

• Daffodil bulb planting
• History walk
• Monthly litter pick
• Pond restoration work
• Rare cat-mint protection

Please note that the September Litter Pick has now been cancelled - the next Litter Pick will be the 28th October.

Please see the Minutes below for more information:

FOHC met at the Garden Room to discuss events for Autumn!

These included:

• Work with TreeBristol
• Bench audit
• Work on the meadow patches
• Nature walk

More details to follow when we get these confirmed!

We'll also be aiming to arrange a FOHC meeting every 6 weeks or so, so please look out for the next meeting in September and feel free to join if you'd like to get involved.

Please find the full Minutes available to download below:

We were excited to welcome volunteers to the Garden Room at The Ardagh on the 22nd July, to reinitiate the FOHC Volunteer Group! 

We had a presentation about the history of the Common/FOHC, along with an explanation of how FOHC works with the Council and The Ardagh Community Trust, and finally a chat about volunteering roles and how to get the word out. As ever, the group needs more Trained Volunteers to lead events - if you'd be interested, please get in touch!

Next steps are getting the word out to more potential volunteers, and to arrange an August Volunteer Meeting (details to follow once confirmed.)

Thank you to all who attended!
Presentation and Minutes are available to download below for those who missed the meeting.

Presentation: July 2023 FOHC Volunteer Meeting