Tag: garden

Annual Residents Meeting

This years Annual Residents Meeting will be held on

26th March at 6:30pm

at The Montpeliano Restaurant, 1st Floor

All residents are invited to attend. Some light refreshments will be served.

The Montpelier Square Garden Committee manages the square garden on behalf of the residents. According to the rules we operate under there can be no less than three and no more than nine committee members at any one time. If more than nine nominations are received then a written poll will be conducted.

If you would like to join the committee for the 2012/13 year then please use the form attached below to nominate yourself for election. The nomination deadline is March 12th. Please return completed forms to Number 8.

CommitteeMemberNominationForm (PDF)

These are the minutes of last year’s meeting:

ARM_2011 (PDF)

Second Place!!

At the prestigious Annual Garden Square Awards last Thursday we received second prize in the keenly contested Small Private Square category. Only those squares who have won a prize are invited so we knew we had secured at least third but it was a great pleasure to hear we had actually won second place!

All thanks must go to the team of Peter, Jean and Maz who worked so hard to get the garden in such fine shape for the judging weekend last June. Second prize is one better than our previous best showing (in 2006) and the gardening team think that going one better is not out of reach. Bring on 2012…

Autumn Committee Meeting

Here is a summary of the items discussed at our Autumn meeting:

We’re winners! Montpelier Square has placed in the top three in the annual Garden Square competition. Our exact position (Gold, Silver or Bronze) will be announced at the prize giving on November 2nd at the Guildhall. Our gardening team and Lady Marshall have every right to feel a glow of pride as we were competing against 50 other squares. We’re hoping to improve on our third place showing in 2006.

The annual budget for extra planting is to be increased to £2000 from £1500 in order to bring some Autumn colour to the garden. Our finest time is always Spring and we are hoping to extend colour and interest further through the gardening year with this additional planting.

Westminster City Council have requested that we plant two additional London Plane trees on the North side of the garden. The London Plane is a magnificent tree and they help define some of the best avenues in London but their sheer size can overwhelm a small space like Montpelier Square so Westminster have acquiesced to our suggestion of planting an Elm instead. They still want one Plane but a compromise has been reached. To this end we are looking to plant a Princeton elm this autumn, somewhere on the NE corner of the square.

DRAFTminutes20Sep2011.pdf

Water Crisis Averted

Hurrah! The irrigation system is back online. Auto-Rain have disconnected zones 3&4 and the rest of the zones are working fine. In a week or two problem zones should be repaired too.

The garden has been without a working irrigation system during one of the warmest and driest Aprils I can remember. Peter and the team from Garden Associates and Lady Marshall have been watering the newly planted shrubs by hand but this was only ever going to be a stopgap measure so we are all very relieved that the system is running again. Continue reading Water Crisis Averted

Irrigation Alert

water leak jpg Our irrigation system has a leak and is currently out of action. We’re hoping it’ll be restored to health by mid-May and a little rain in the meantime wouldn’t hurt.

Our water experts are Auto-Rain Irrigation and they found the initial leak when de-winterising the system in March. Our system is constructed of (now old-fashioned) PVC pipes and at some point over the winter a careless spade or fork has shattered a section of the main water pipe. Continue reading Irrigation Alert

All Change at Montpelier Square

On April 1st after 20 years of service Spike Jackson stepped down as gardening contractor. The current fine state of the garden owes much to his and Lady Marshall’s efforts over those two decades.

Our new contractor is Robert Player, an expert in London garden squares. He manages over 20 other gardens and he brings a brisk, professional attitude that is immediately bearing fruit.

His team have already cleared away an overgrown section of Snowberry that had threatened to completely overwhelm the NW corner of the garden (where the swing used to be).

The gardens Mr Player manages are regular prize winners in the annual Square Gardens competition and he feels that our garden has potential just waiting to be unlocked.