Well Close

I acted for the Community of St Peter when it purchased Well Close some three decades ago: the house turned out to be riddled with dry rot, which the nuns' surveyor somehow overlooked - leading to more work for my firm in the shape of a negligence claim.

The Anglican Benedictine community had run a large house near Stonehouse for some years as a home for vulnerable girls: I remember a large aviary there, the pride and joy of the solitary nun who was still actively involved, the characterful Sister Pauline Mary.

Until fairly recently, the front garden of Well Close, large considering it's in a fairly central location, was unproductive. Thanks however to the efforts of Miggi Lorraine, Peter Clegg and others, it now hosts a community composting area, and plans have been hatched to increase its usefulness further. It was in this connection that Peter asked me to bring my camera along to today's hedge planting. The local paper sent their photographer, but my angle  - see my website - would have been different.

Some 60 of us were there: besides the Mayor, Wendy Flynn, there were various Councillors and other nobs, staff and children from Christ Church Primary school and residents of Well Close itself. Between us, we planted 150 saplings (mainly donated by the Woodland Trust and Chris Evans' Butterfly Project) in less than an hour - a happy occasion, and proof that many hands make light work.

The overall aim is to increase local biodiversity, the garden becoming available for the residents, local school children and people with learning and/or physical disabilities to grow their own organically produced fruit and vegetables.

Cheltenham's wasteful Ladies

In Fathers and Sons, Turgenev wrote, "A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound."

Only a couple of hundred yards from the Lansdown Community Composting base (now up and running at Well Close), this sight caught my attention yesterday as I biked past. The bins are at the back of one of the Cheltenham Ladies' College residential houses, Sidney Lodge. Not much attempt to separate waste there, I thought: what does the College say about recycling?

Looking at its website, the answer is "not much". There's an entry dating back 18 months or so: "The Sixth Form Environment Group has been trying to raise awareness about environmental issues to the younger girls in College... We hope through this system to make the girls take responsibility for their daily actions which ultimately shape our environment." And an Environment Week was held a couple of years ago. Could do better, I'd say.