Join a national spring clean, Cooking With Josh, and more.
Love Your Chelmsford, March 2024
Two photos, one of reed cutaway at a stream and another of bricks in a shallow hole in the earth.
Helping wildlife at Frankland Fields Local Nature Reserve
Last month saw volunteers at our Frankland Fields LNR site in South Woodham Ferrers help the rich diversity of wildlife there have a suitable habitat - in particular the reptiles and amphibians. They:
* Cut back the reed bed (as it overgrows) and dug a ditch for the water to stream through;
* Built a new 'hibernaculum', a hobbit hut-like hibernation shelter.
This green space has also been highlighted on our social media for *World Wildlife Day (3 March)*, because it finds itself home to two species of bee that are especially rare in the UK:
* Brown carder bees, the scarcest of all ginger carder bees
* Shrill carder bees, possibly the rarest bumblebee in the whole of the UK
Sadly their numbers nationally have been in decline. So LNR status helps to protect these populations by protecting their habitats - a priority of this site's management plan.
Flower-rich grasslands are exactly where you'll find these bees, as we let the grass here grow in warmer months you'll see many wildflowers - and many bees - start to thrive.
A video thumbnail for a cooking video. [
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Cooking with Josh: Bread Pudding
*'Cooking with Josh' *is back with another recipe to help you make the most of your food.
Bread often perishes within days in our cupboards, so there's little surprise it is our most wasted food item nation-wide.
With that in mind, this month Josh brings you Bread Pudding: a classic sweet snack that can be traced back for centuries. It embodies the philosophy of making use of food that would otherwise be thrown away.
*Watch the full video* [
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Official campaign artwork for the Great British Spring Clean: a giant bin and illustrated person towering over a meadow. [
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Take part in the Great British Spring Clean
Ready to get your spring clean on? From *15 to 31 March*, Keep Britain Tidy is enlisting us to help clean up our environment with the nation's biggest litter pick.
Members of the public are encouraged to *pledge to pick up one bag of litter* - or more - within those 2 weeks.
Not only does picking up rubbish make an immediate visible difference to our green spaces, it also takes polluters out of our environment and, in turn, creates a healthier home for all our natural neighbours: the wildlife in it.
You can pledge as an individual, a group, or a school [
] on the Keep Britain Tidy website today. Ever better, how about setting yourself a Platinum Pledge challenge for the charity's 70th anniversary? Pick up 70 items, spend 70 minutes litter-picking... fill 70 bags?
Share your work or explore others' on social media with the hashtags #LitterHeroes and #PlatinumPledge.
*Make the pledge* [
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A spying toaster in a kitchen. [
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Climate Ambassador Blog: Of course I want my toaster to spy on me
This month our *Climate and Ecology Ambassador*, Councillor Sherlock, is here to talk about new technology and reconnecting with nature:
"2023 could be the year that we take our first steps into the next revolution with the release of generative AI. As part of this new stage in human history we need to make sure fixing climate change is included as we take our next leap forward.
"Now, I am a big fan of all this tech but I need to unplug sometimes, or I get grumpy and irritable. I’ll share some of the things I do to give me a needed break from all the gadgets and laptops. Perhaps it’ll give you some ideas of activities that are out there and available to join in with."
*Keep reading* [
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A volunteer for Chelmsford Parks wearing a branded green shirt and working in tall greenery. [
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Volunteer with us
If you haven’t already signed up to volunteer with us, *join us now [
] to get involved with your local community*, meet new people, make new friends, develop your skills and help improve your local environment.
The work of volunteers helps make our parks and green spaces even better, both for the humans that visit them and for the nature that lives within them.
Snowdrops, a white dropping flower with a bright green stem, in front of a brick building. [
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Nature Watch
Do you have regular wildlife visitors to your garden or outdoor spaces? We’d love to hear about them and see your pictures or videos. If you’d be happy for us to share them, you might even see them pop up as part of Chelmsford City Council’s *#WildlifeWednesday* posts.
Pictured: Snowdrops outside the Civic Centre, Duke Street.
*Report your nature watch news* [
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Space to Thrive footer - dandelions and flowers
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This email was sent to david.dawson@trustedcarcheck.co.uk using GovDelivery Communications Cloud on behalf of: Chelmsford City Council · Chelmsford Civic Centre · Duke Street, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 1JE · (01245) 606440 GovDelivery logo [
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