Ward End Gardeners Association ‘EVE’ Awards

Have you noticed any changes on your site in recent years or months?  Is there anything which needs to improve?    If your answer is ‘yes’ to either of these questions, you’ll probably know that allotment sites only improve if there are enough volunteers willing to do more than look after their own plots.

Voluntary work is one of the best traditions in this country – something to be proud of – and we’ve got some great examples of volunteers in our Association and on our sites, making a difference to the allotment experience for everyone.       We’ve also got people willing to take on the challenge of long neglected plots, putting in the extra time needed to make them fit for growing crops.

2021 is a year of anniversaries for WEGA –

• the setting up of the allotments in Ward End in 1931 – 90 years;
• the founding of our Association in 1951 – 70 years; and
• the building of the pavilion at Northleigh Rd, WEGA’s headquarter site, in 1971 – 50 years.

So, to celebrate these, the current WEGA Officers decided to introduce awards which recognise the value of what some of our most active plotholders have done recently – or in fact for a long time.  Called the EVE awards – for Exceptional Voluntary Effort – they recognise the role of our unsung heroes, who just get on and do what needs doing with no payment for their work. 

There’s nothing like people noticing and appreciating your efforts to keep up motivation – so we could do this every year, and say thank you too when we see the difference.   

This year at our Annual General Meeting on 13^th November, we celebrated the efforts of 18 individuals and presented them with a personally engraved glass highlighting their role.

• Challenge Champions.    Awarded to 3 new plotholders who took on exceptionally overgrown plots and in under a year transformed them into productive allotment gardens:  Qasad Hussain and Mohammad Khalid Habib, both at Lime Tree Road, and Maxine Cole, at Fairholme Road.

• Rubbish Removal and Recycling Champions.    Shane and Paul Delaney have been organising the removal of rubbish and recycling on Blackpit Lane site for years, and it’s the only one of our 5 sites where we haven’t had to hire skips over the past 2 years.  They’ve also re-organised the communal storage shed, and strimmed vacant plots since Graham Smith, another tireless volunteer, died in 2020.
• Restoration Champions.  On three of the sites, the Officers picked some of the people who’ve gone the extra mile to develop or maintain facilities and make their sites more attractive, clean, tidy and convenient for everyone who uses them.   At Fairholme Road, Stuart Berrow and Rob Hastings do all sorts – from clearing rubbish and overgrowth on empty plots to keeping the tearoom clean and tidy.   At Lime Tree Road, Mohammed Rashid worked with David Read (the WEGA Treasurer) to renovate the toilet block and renew the plumbing fittings and he also is handy with the strimmer on overgrown plots.  At Northleigh Road,  Chris Cullen has made sure for years that the toilets are up to standard, vital now we have to take much more care over hygiene, while Masood Yasin, a plotholder who only started last October, has organised tip runs of rubbish from off the site and encouraged other people to do their bit.

Regeneration Champions.  At St Margarets Road, it’s a different story – this was a site of 22 plots which in 2018 only had 5 individual plotholders, all over 65, and a nursery school which only made occasional use of their plots.  Since then, plots have been taken by 5 new individuals, a Gardening Club, a Primary School and Unity Hubb, the community development arm of St Margarets Community Trust.   The site is now thriving and busy every week, and a lot of the regeneration is because of the efforts of the longstanding tenants who accepted the challenge of many newcomers turning up to enjoy being outdoors; they’ve provided facilities, help, tips, tools and plants to get them going in different activities as well as gardening.   Gerald Howles, Steve Smith, Chris Hodson and Roy Brittle received Regeneration Champion awards in recognition of their various roles.

Communication Champions.   Getting people connected is another vital skill and activity in livening up the sites and ensuring they are safe places to be, especially now we have more women taking on plots, and some of us are not in the best of health.   We made 2 Communication Champion awards: one to Ish Zaman who set up a WhatsApp group at Lime Tree Road site and does a lot to encourage people to share their growing successes.  The other is to Karen Watts, a long-standing plotholder at Northleigh Road who is always at the ready to give and share ideas, information, tips, plants and anything else to other plotholders and visitors alike. 

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Newcomer award – WEGA Development Champion.   When you’re new to having an allotment, the last thing on your mind is getting involved in committees and organising in a voluntary association.  But one plotholder, who only last October started renting a bramble and nettle-infested plot at Lime Tree Road, decided he could do just that.  He took on the role of Site Rep and WEGA Committee member after Keith Simpson died in April 2021.  He’s also going to run the WEGA Stores at Northleigh Rd with Abdul Majid now that Mick Merrill is stepping down.   For that, we gave Charles Bloom a Newcomer Award in recognition of his efforts to help develop the Association, and improve his site’s facilities. 

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Special award.  Finally, most of us in the UK don’t have to worry on a daily basis about the basic safety and wellbeing of our families, but one of our plotholders with his family in Afghanistan has to do just that.  He could be expected not to concern himself with anything else: but for Noor Hashemkil, nothing is too much trouble when it comes to helping other people and making the St Margarets Road site a warm and welcoming place to be.  For this, he was given a Special Award. 

In the next year or so, we are planning to spend less time sorting out rubbish removal and put our efforts into positive ways to look after the environment – from reducing our carbon footprint to conserving water, from getting children involved in gardening to trying out new ways of growing food and new types of plants.  And of course, there’s lots to do to improve facilities on the sites so people can make the best use of their time.

So who’s for taking up the challenge in 2022?