Save the date!

Eco activities for your calendar over the next 2 months…

MARCH
10	Composting Workshop | Fri 10th March, 10am – 12 pm | Hazel Walk Community Allotment (Between Hazel Crescent and Oxford Rd, Kidlington, OX5 1ED) – Come learn how to create your own fertile mulch! Contact
11	Garden ‘Open Day’ | Sat 11 March, 10am – 12pm| Park Hill Recreation Ground Garden Open Day (OX5 2DA) – Come and help with Spring tasks in these community green spaces
20	Composting Workshop | Mon 20th March, 3pm – 5pm | Park Hill Recreation Ground, Kidlington (OX5 2DA)  – Come learn how to create your own fertile mulch!
25	Earth Hour and Nature Walk | Sat 25 March, 8:30-9.30 pm | St Mary’s carpark (OX52AZ) TBC – Join Wild Kidlington and others around the globe in switching off all your lights for an hour, and while you’re at it why not join us for a nature walk over St Mary’s Fields, culminating with a hot chocolate round a fire pit!
APRIL
1	St Mary’s Fields Work Party | Sat 1st Apr, 10am-12pm | St Mary’s carpark (OX52AZ) – Join the team of volunteers working on some Spring tasks to encourage nature. Also enjoy a well-earned slice of Julia or Rosie’s homemade cake at half time!
1	Waste Innovation Station Headquarters Clothing Swap | Sat 1st Apr, 11am-2pm | Exeter Hall (OA5 1AB) – Refresh your wardrobe by swapping your unwanted items for new ones. Bring up to 10 good quality clean items of clothing and 2 accessories. Don’t have clothes to swap? Not a problem! You can pick out items for 50p per kilogram.
5	Kidlington Gardening Society | Weds 5th Apr, 7.30pm | Exeter Hall, small hall (OA5 1AB) –  George Lockwood will be this month’s speaker, and will be sharing on the topic of Soil Structure and Healthy Soils
22	Earth Day | Sat 22nd April, 11am – 2pm | Park Hill Recreation Ground, Kidlington (OX5 2DA) – Join Cherwell Collective for food, fun and a chance to help plant up a living sculpture in the shape of a unicorn for the Coronation
28	City Nature Challenge | 28th Apr – 1st May | TBC – Wild Kidlington is planning to join in with the annual four-day global bioblitz – photographing and identifying the nature on our doorstep. Watch this space for more info!

Local Eco News

Some Headlines since the last update…

• Visit from representatives of Thame Green Living – at our monthly KEG meeting on 2nd March we were joined by Charles Boundy and Jez Clark who shared some of the things they have learned in creating and implementing the Thame Green Living Plan. We were very inspired and are now looking at how a similar strategic framework might help us to organise our efforts in the future.

• Kidlington Hedgehog Highway Project Launched – Well, ‘launched’ is perhaps too grand a term at present. It’s a project that’s just getting started. But we’ll need your help. For more information, or to join the fledgling team please see the webpage about this Wild Kidlington initiative.

• New Trees Sighted – You may have spotted a flock of new tree saplings has landed in a field down by the river. This was apparently organised by an ecologically minded gin company would you believe as part of their annual ‘tree planting party’. From all accounts these carbon-capturing saplings have been planted in an orderly and upright fashion, and so we must assume our tree-planting angels held fire on any gin consumption until after the job was done.

If you have any local eco news or events to feed in to our next monthly digest please email: kidlingtonecogroup@gmail.com

Our next KEG meeting is on Thurs 6th Apr, 1pm @ Exeter Hall (in the small hall) – feel free to join us!