In the Wixams Community Group we love gardening so in March 2022 we ran a little project to give away sunflower seeds to homes all across Wixams. We started with a couple of large bags of seeds of giant yellow and red sunflowers. These were put into around 100 packs which we could give out to the community, each containing:

• Approx. 10 yellow sunflower seeds
• Approx. 10 red sunflower seeds
• Growing instructions

We had given a few bags out already but after a post on our Facebook group every single remaining bag was claimed in just one evening! We were overwhelmed by the response and wanted more people to take part so we reached out to Seasons garden centre in Wixams. Seasons were great and, despite their limited stocks, they gave us enough seeds so that we could put together around 50 more packs of seeds which we were able to distribute. Thank you Seasons! 👏🏻

Photos

Below is a selection of the fantastic sunflowers grown around Wixams from this project.

Yet again Wixams was absolutely thriving on Halloween, the streets were packed with families and children all dressed up for trick-or-treating and on the hunt for sweeties. The community put on an amazing display for all to enjoy too, with decorations ranging from some lovely carved pumpkins by the front door, all the way up to some impressive and creative displays of fun and spookiness!

36 homes entered into our competition this year and our entrants were clearly very competitive which gave our judges a tough time choosing the winner. We’d like to extend our thanks to everyone who took the time to make Wixams a special place to be this Halloween.

Thanks Yous

We’re very lucky to be able to work with some wonderful people who come forward time and time again to help us out with our competitions. Firstly a massive thank you to Michelle and the team at Budgens for supplying all the goodies for the prize hamper. This was all put together by the fabulous Faye into a super two-part Halloween themed hamper. We had a second prize this year which was kindly donated by the Wixams Parish Council. Yet again a huge thank you goes to Asan (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com) for his excellent photos taken of our entrants, a tough job given how spread out they were across Wixams! And finally thank you to Nathan and Barbara from the Wixams Events Team and the rest of the judges: Saqhib, Richard, Lucy, Cecilia and Sam 👏

The Runners-Up

In second place was this very spooky house on Silverstream which was adorned with all sorts of props, including a coffin for you to open if you dared (not pictured) and lots of worrying noises coming from inside of people trying to get out! 😮 Congratulations go to them and they have now been awarded their prize of a £50 gift card for John Lewis 🛍

The Top Prize

The winners this year took home a trophy celebrating their home being the ‘Spookiest House in Wixams 2021’ and of course the hampers full of booze, snacks and goodies worth £100.

The Winners!

There were plenty of great homes to choose from but our judges were very impressed by this home on Corncroft Leys in village 4 which they felt perfectly captured the spirit of Halloween. They noted the exceptional effort that had gone into the decorations, many of them home made, as well as how engaged visitors were with the display and characters. One judge said they felt like they were walking into a movie about Halloween! We’ve now dropped off their prize and we hope they’ve already got stuck into the lovely treats. Well done and congratulations 🍻

Other Entrants

Commiserations to our other contenders this year, there really were some amazing displays out there which wowed the judges and trick-or-treaters alike! Here are some great photos from some of the other entrants.

 

Despite such a turbulent year the Wixams community has excelled itself once again and together have created a magical place filled with lights, colours and decorations for everyone to enjoy. We’ve seen lots of families taking walks around our town enjoying the displays and getting into the festive mood. Thank you to everyone who decorated their homes and helped to make Wixams a special place to live.

Thank yous

We’d like to express our gratitude to a lot of people for their help in bringing this competition to the Wixams community. Firstly thank you to Michelle and the Budgens team for supplying all the items for the prize, and to Amanda for putting it all together into two huge Christmas themed hampers. Yet again a massive thank you goes to Asan (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com) for his amazing photos from all across Wixams, he gave up a lot of his time capturing photos for the competition but also to share with the community. Thanks also to Jeremie for the fab photos he shared in the Wixams Christmas Lights Facebook group. And finally thank you to our judges, Nathan & Barbara from the Wixams Events Team, Margaret, Saqhib, Paula, Cecilia and Richard.

The Prize

This year’s winners were awarded a two-part hamper filled with drinks (mostly booze!), chocolates, biscuits, crisps, snacks and more 🍾

The Winners

With so many beautifully decorated houses on display our judges had a lot of choice and variety this year, but there was one that stood out and was the clear winner. This home has been very popular with the little ones who could be regularly seen looking through the fence at the amazing display. They managed to fit a lot of detail into their garden including an ice-rink for the dolls, a gingerbread house, lights, glass balloons and more! The winners have now received their prize and we hope it helps to make their Christmas even more special.

Christmas in Wixams

Here is just a selection of some of the other wonderful displays in Wixams this year, including some of our other finalists. You can find lots more photos taken by Asan on his website, and by other members of the community in the Wixams Christmas Lights Facebook group.

The Wixams community excelled itself again for Halloween in 2020 and put on a fantastic display for all to enjoy. The Trick-or-Treaters were out in smaller groups than normal and residents found some creative ways to share sweeties with the kids in a safe way, one home even had them hanging from a string! Thank you to everyone for bringing some fun and joy to Wixams during such a difficult time.

Thank yous

Yet again we’d like to send Michelle and the team at Budgens a massive thank you for supplying all the goodies for the prize hamper. Thank you to Amanda who did a great job putting it all together into a fantastic Halloween theme with lots of glittery spiders and cobwebs. A huge thank you goes to Asan (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com) who rushed around all evening taking amazing photos of as many homes as possible before people started taking their decorations down. And finally thank you to the Wixams Events Team and the rest of the judges for helping us find all the fantastic finalists and making sure the competition went smoothly. Thank you Nathan, Cecilia, Barbara, Graeme, Saqhib, Paula and Richard 🎃

The prize

The winners are now the proud owners of a trophy for having the ‘Spookiest House in Wixams 2020’ as well as a bumper two part hamper full of goodies worth £100.

The winners!

This year the judges had plenty of great homes to choose from but the clear winners this year were this fabulous home on Green Lane. They really went the extra mile to celebrate Halloween and the whole family were even dressed up as The Addams Family! Well done to them and we hope they enjoy their prize 🍾

Other contenders

The judges has a lot of homes to choose from this year so we wanted to share some photos of some of the other finalists. Thank you all for your wonderful displays.

Following on from the success of our Spring Bulb Planting morning back in November we had planned to run a second gardening event, a Summer Flowering Planting morning. It was hoped we could run the day in a similar way, however due to the Coronavirus outbreak we were unable to hold a public event so a small number of people got together to plant the flowers in July.

In March we ordered the plants, geraniums and sweet alyssum, as plugs which were immediately re-potted into trays. In June when it was clear we were still unable to hold the event we had to ask for donations of pots so we could transfer as many of the plants as possible and they could continue to grow. Also in June a few of us met to remove a lot of heavy clay from some of the areas and to improve the soil with compost and sand.

We’d like to thank everyone who donated pots, those who helped improve the soil or plant the flowers and to Lakeview Village Hall committee for funding this project.

The Journey in Pictures

In collaboration with the Bedford Homeless Partnership

In recent years, there has been more awareness about the hardship of homelessness in Britain, with winter being an especially challenging time for anyone without housing. Bedford has the 8th highest number of rough sleepers in the whole of England, so we decided to support the Bedford Homeless Partnership in their appeal to donate items that would help people in our community that are homeless in the cold season.

On 25th January we held a drop-off session for donations in Lakeview Village Hall and invited Wixams residents to come by and bring with them any items that they would like to contribute to our collective donation.

We know that the Wixams community has a big heart, but during the session we really were amazed by the generosity and the number of residents that came by to drop off donations. Over the 3 hours about 60 residents visited our session and gave as much as they could – coats, blankets, toiletries, gloves, hats, books, food items and much, much more.

You can see below the huge contribution donated by the Wixams community. Well done Wixams!

All donations will be forwarded to the Bedford Homeless Partnership, who will make sure the items will be directed to the homeless charities in need.

We can proudly put into numbers what your contributions amounted to, it’s very impressive!

A big thank you for everyone who came and donated, your contribution will make a huge difference to the life of someone less fortunate!

We’d also like to thank Paula and Lakeview Village Hall for allowing us the use of the Swan Room, and a big thank you to Asan for taking fantastic photos of the donations.

Press Coverage

This project has been covered by the Bedford Independent, you can find the story here: www.bedfordindependent.co.uk/toiletries-food-and-clothing-donated-for-bedford-homeless-partnership-by-wixams-residents/

Still want to donate?

If you were unable to make the date, but would still like to make a donation, please visit the following charities to see how you may be able to help. They will inform you about what types of donations are required.

• SMART Prebend Centre
• King’s Arms Project

Please visit the Bedford Homeless Partnership website to find out more about them and the services they provide.

Streetlink

If you are aware of someone sleeping rough, please use Streetlink. This will connect you to the local support team from Bedford Borough Council.

You can also download the Streetlink app here:

• Apple
• Android

Latest Update

Update 1 – 17 March

The deadline for comments on the G-Park planning application has now passed. A total of 114 objections to the proposal were submitted by residents. The decision on the application will be made by the planning team at Bedford Borough Council on 17th March. We will update this page with news when we have it.

Update 2 – 7 May

Bedford Borough Council are still awaiting a formal view from the Highways Team so the decision cannot be made until that is complete.

Update 3 – 17 June

The decision on the G-Park application has not yet been made however multiple residents have notified us of a significant increase in commercial traffic on the The Causeway and the impact it is having on them. They are concerned about how much this is likely to increase over the coming months and once new developments are opened.

Residents have mainly complained about the noise made by heavy vehicles 24 hours a day and a major increase in cars and motorbikes (especially during B&M shift changes) racing between roundabouts as they enter or exit Wixams, many with loud exhausts. As well as this being a nuisance, it’s also disrupting their sleep. There are also safety issues when crossing Fisherswood Road and multiple near accidents have been witnessed already, with so many young children crossing that road, and no dedicated crossing point or warning signs, there are grave concerns that someone will be hurt or killed. The increase in pollution has also been felt by some including one person who is suffering from serious asthma attacks already.

One resident has recorded and collated the current levels of traffic into the document linked below. It shows a current average of 56 HGVs crossing The Causeway per hour between 5am and 10pm with peaks of nearly 80 within 1 hour. Based on the planned increase in commercial floorspace it has been estimated the commercial traffic might increase by a factor of 2.4.

• The Causeway Traffic Density – June 2020.pdf

In January we suggested that an alternative route be found for commercial traffic and the Borough have now agree to look into this. However, it’s clear that there’s already a big enough issue which needs to be addressed and agreeing to the G-Park application without a Plan B in place might leave residents in an even worse situation if an alternate route cannot be found.

Update 4 – 29 July

The planning application has been objected to by the Borough’s Environmental Health team and the developer has been asked to mitigate for the objections. Details of the objections can be found in the following documents:

• 19 02724 MAR w CONSULTEE ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH 200702 COMMENTS
• 19 02724 MAR V05B LOCATION PLAN
• 19 02724 MAR V08B BLOCK PLAN
• 19 02724 MAR V44B FENCE DETAILS
• 19 02724 MAR V89A NOISE ASSESSMENT ADDENDUM
• LNWR Noise Assessment Review_WSP 13 May 2020 (008)

A second consultation phase has now started with a deadline of 20th August for comments: 19/02724/MAR

Update 5 – 18 August

We have reviewed the latest changes to the planning application and there are minimal changes associated with the scale of the buildings and the proximity to residential areas. If you haven’t done so already you can still leave a comment about this development which focuses on the material aspects of the buildings and site. In the outline application the buildings were further away from houses which means this can still be changed to move the units further away. This document outlines the changes between the documents and shows where the units have been moved closer.

Update 6 – 20 September

The Borough have again rejected the G-Park planning application due to another objection from the environmental health team over the noise concerns and impacts on nearby residents. The planning team met with the applicant last week and they have indicated that they intend to revise the scheme to relocate the building to the south of the site and move the service yard to face Fisherswood Road.

They will spend the next few weeks working up the revised scheme, including a fresh noise assessment. Amended plans will then be submitted (potentially in the middle of October) and a further round of public consultation will then be undertaken.

Update 7 – 11 October

The revised application documents have now been submitted and the developers have shifted unit 3 of the development to move the HGV depot onto the Fisherswood Road side.

This has been done to address an objection from Environmental Health over noise impact concerns for residents. The developers have also added some 4 metre high fences to act as visual and acoustic barriers. With the depot now on the north side it now raises questions as to whether this will be more noisy for residents at the WRV.

Unit 3 itself will now also be closer to Watson Road and Bedford Road than in the previous consultation and in the already approved outline application, so will be visually more impactful.

Update 8 – 7 December

The application for the G-Park development has now been approved:

https://publicaccess.bedford.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=Q2B0QQCUM0200

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Original Post:

Bedford Borough Council (BBC) planning committee have received an application for the building of 3 large warehouses on the land north of Watson Road, the road which currently serves Wilstead Industrial Park. As with all planning applications, the public has the right to voice their support or opposition to the proposals. We have created this information page so you can:

• Understand what is being proposed.
• Learn how you can take action if you wish to.

Planning Committees are legally obliged to consider views from the public in their decision making so we encourage residents to take the time to leave comments.

What is Being Built?

Planning application 19/02724/MAR is for:

‘Approval of all reserved matters (appearance, landscaping, layout, scale and access) for three employment units (Use Class B8 with ancillary office floorspace) pursuant to Outline permission 19/01137/MAO. | Land North Of Watson Road Wilstead Bedfordshire’.

Details of the units to be built (source: Design & Access Statement – 19 02724 MAR V60.pdf):

• Mostly warehouse space with attached offices
• A total of 49,803 m² (536,079 ft²) building space
• 10.62 hectares (26.23 acres) total site area
• Each building is 18.15 metres tall
• Within 90 metres of the nearest home
• Parking for 318 cars
• Parking for 115 HGVs
• 24/7 operating hours
• Access provided from the A6 via The Causeway

Other Warehouses in Wixams

There are already a number of warehouses either built, being built or planned for Wixams:

• Wilstead Industrial Park contains over a dozen warehouses/units.
• Three new 24/7 units are currently being completed in Wilstead Ind. Park totalling 15,739 m² (169,400 ft²) with parking for 161 cars and 113 HGVs (source: Wilstead Industrical Park Brochure). These units have no currently planned occupiers. RED
• The B&M warehouse is now operational, it totals 91,000 m² (979,515 ft²) (source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-43825804). PURPLE
• A new Aldi distribution centre is to be built close to the B&M warehouse, its buildings will total 78,857 m² (848,809 ft²) and it will have parking for 611 cars and 229 HGV loading docks (source: Planning Application 17 02657 MAR). YELLOW
• 5 new units are to be built north of Fisherwood Road totalling 7,358 m² (79,203 ft²) and will have parking for 109 vehicles (source: Planning Application 19 02398 MAF) ORANGE

This gives a total of around 250,000 m² (2.7M ft²) of warehouse/unit space.

Possible Concerns

Whilst job opportunities for residents should always be welcomed, there are some potential concerns which could be raised regarding the building of these units. We have outlined a few issues below which the public might want to consider.

Obstructed Views

The three units are planned to be built on land which is currently open space and offers views across the Marston Vale. If built, these warehouses will be highly visible when entering Wixams via The Causeway, to residents as they move within the village along Brooklands Avenue and Bedford Road, and the biggest impact would be to those whose homes look directly onto the site. The closest unit will be within 90 metres of the closest home and will be over 18 metres tall.

Related articles:

• BBC News – Milton Keynes: 18m-high warehouse is a ‘disaster’
• BBC News – Milton Keynes Council takes steps over ‘huge’ warehouse

Building Design

The style of the proposed warehouses matches many huge warehouses around the country such as near Junction 13 of the M1 and is designed to reduce its impact from a distance. When compared to the brand new houses, the greenery on Bedford Road and the nearby lake, this type of building will dominate the landscape and significantly impact the visual appeal of this part of Wixams.

Privacy

The offices of Unit 3 are alongside Bedford Road, this means any home visible from the building will be overlooked by workers in those offices.

Traffic and Road Usage

All the units and warehouses listed above are accessed from the A6 via The Causeway. In the last few weeks there has been a significant amount of damage to this road and the main roundabout to Bedford Road possibly due to the increased HGV use since the opening of the B&M warehouse. There have also been comments made by the public regarding the noise made by HGVs accessing the industrial area at night. As more units are planned and built these issues are going to get worse.

If you are experiencing problems with lorries or HGVs you can report this to Bedford Borough Council using the following page: www.bedford.gov.uk/parking-roads-and-travel/roads-and-pavements/lorry-issue/

Road Safety

The areas around Brooklands Avenue, Fisherwood Road and Bedford Road towards Elstow are often busy with pedestrians, cyclists and dog walkers. The more vehicles using these roads the less safe these areas become.

Noise and Light Pollution

With the existing and planned warehouses in Wixams being mainly for distribution it’s likely that we will see a huge number of HGVs travelling around the north of Wixams spewing a lot of pollution. The proximity of this site to residential areas including the Wixams Retirement Village means that pollution levels in that area will certainly be made worse, causing damage to the environment and posing a health risk to wildlife and residents.

With 24/7 operating hours there will also be an increase in the light projected externally from the warehouses toward neighbouring homes.

House Prices

The Causeway is one of the main access points into Wixams and will be the route taken by many when visiting Wixams to view properties. Along with the existing warehouses such as B&M and in Wilstead Industrial Park, these three units might change the initial impressions of potential house buyers and may dissuade them from buying, negatively impacting property prices.

Empty Warehouses

It’s unknown at this stage whether there are already businesses lined up to fill these three new units. However, the three units currently being completed adjacent to Seasons were built without planned tenants. There are other warehouses in the Borough which are built and remain empty, such as next to the A421 towards Junction 13 and the A428 near Kempston.

By planning in this manner the decision as to what types of businesses might invest in Wixams is being made by the landowners not by businesses themselves. There are already concerns that the Borough is being covered in warehouses as well as the areas close to Junction 13.

Warehouse Jobs

The typical jobs made available in warehouses are picking and packing along with administrative and other associated roles. Picking and packing jobs are normally low paid with current market rates at around £17,000 per year for full time employment. With the average house prices in Wixams being over £300,000 (source: www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/wixams/) it’s less likely that many of these jobs will be filled by residents. This would mean that employees will need to travel into Wixams from elsewhere and Wixams’ residents will be forced to seek employment outside, causing more congestion, noise, damage and pollution.

Business Incubator Units

It was originally planned that Wixams would be built with a set of 16 Business Incubator Units which are designed to help startup companies. These units typically offer a set of facilities including office space, a phone line and broadband internet connection, meeting rooms and also experts to support new business owners. These facilities are often offered for free for a period but are typical cheap to rent after the free period finishes. The units planned for Wixams were to range in size from 25-100 m².

To help with the meeting of a schools funding gap, the requirement to build the incubator units was removed, meaning startup businesses in Wixams are not able to take advantage of these facilities (source: Planning Application 15 03039 S106). There are no plans to offer a replacement for the incubator units which would help local businesses to get started and to help them build successful enterprises.

How to Take Action

This application is now closed.

If you would like to leave comments supporting or opposing the building of these new units you are encouraged to do so using the official channels provided by Bedford Borough Council. Please ensure you include the Planning Application Reference 19/02724/MAR.

Please read the Council’s guidance on planning application comments: www.bedford.gov.uk/planning-and-building/planning-applications/comment-on-planning-applications/

We also recommend reading the following blog to help you if you’d like to object to this proposal: Martin Goodall’s Planning Law Blog

By email

Send your email to planning@bedford.gov.uk

Online

1. Visit the planning applications search page: www.bedford.gov.uk/planning-and-building/planning-applications/search-plans-page/
2. Click the button View and comment on planning applications
3. Enter the Application Reference: 19/02724/MAR and click the Search button
4. You can review the associated documents under the Documents tab if required (19 02724 MAR V60.pdf is recommended)
5. Follow the instructions under the Comments tab to create an account and leave your comment
6. To oppose this application select Object as both the Stance and the Reason for comment.

By Post

Write to:

Planning Services, Bedford Borough Council,
4th Floor, Borough Hall,
Cauldwell Street,
Bedford,
MK42 9AP

Community Meeting

We will be hosting a meeting to discuss this planning application and give extra guidance on how to respond to it on Wednesday 22nd January at 8pm, all are welcome to attend.

We held a community meeting on 22nd January which was very well attended. The residents were all given an opportunity to share their concerns and to ask questions. The main points identified from this meeting:

• Please try to respond on as many points as possible to make it more likely your comments will be factored in. You can find the BBC Material Planning Considerations document here: BBC-Material-Planning-Considerations.pdf
• As part of the wider problems with road usage please suggest an alternative route is found for access to the industrial areas, such as via the road leading to the gravel area, as illustrated here: Wixams-Industrial-Traffic-Possible-Link-Road.png
• Don’t forget to mention that there should be more provisions for community facilities in the S106. If you could mention skateparks for the teenagers that would be really helpful for an upcoming project we have planned.
• If you’d like to take this matter further with one of our elected representatives their details are:
  • Nadine Dorries MP: nadine.dorries@parliament.uk
  • Mayor Dave Hodgson: dave.hodgson@bedford.gov.uk
  • Cllr. Graham Coombes: wilshamstead.ward@yahoo.co.uk
• Cllr. Coombes would like to be CC’d into any correspondence.
• Don’t forget to encourage friends, family and neighbours to respond by sharing, emailing, texting, tweeting or talking.

Stay in Touch

We would like to hear your views on this planning application and others. Please use the Contact page or join our Facebook group to get in touch with us.

We have taken great care to ensure the contents of this page are accurate, if you find a mistake please contact us so we can rectify it.

The 2019 Wixams Christmas Decorations Competition is now complete and we’re very pleased to announce the winning home further down the page. Every year in Wixams we see a lot of nicely decorated houses and our judges were very impressed by the fantastic array of styles on display this year.

All the Wixams Community Group projects are led by at least one of our committee members. This project was a joint effort by Cecilia and Karin, well done to them both for their hard work in putting together an excellent competition.

Some thank yous

The biggest thank you (again) goes to Michelle and her team at Budgens in Wixams for donating all the goodies for our prize, we could not run the competition without their support and generosity. Thank you again to Amanda for putting together the great Christmas themed hamper for our winners. All the wonderful photos of the houses below were all taken by Asan (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com) who gave up a lot of his time to help us, especially because of the bad weather of late. And finally we’d like to thank our judges Barbara, Saqhib, Trish, Margaret and Richard.

The prize

Our winners have already received their hamper containing gin, wines, beer, chocolates, a panettone, tea, coffee, snacks and more:

The Runners-Up

We didn’t have a prize for second place but the home of our runners-up was so beautifully decorated we wanted to share it with you. Well done for such a fantastic effort.

The Winners

Many congratulations go to this winning home on Brooklands Avenue. You can tell this family love Christmas and when Santa Claus is flying over Wixams, their home will be the first he sees! We are sure this house gives a lot of happiness to the kids that walk by each day. We hope their prize will help make Christmas even more special 🥂

Other finalists

Here are some photos of the other great contenders in this competition. We’d like to thank everyone who took part for helping to make our village a fun and festive place this Christmas 🎅🏻

UPDATE – Please skip to the bottom for some recent photos of our spring flowers in bloom

With around 80 people taking part in our Spring Bulb Planting Morning, we’re very pleased to say that this project was an even bigger success than we had dared hope for. There were a wide range of ages, from toddlers right up to our lovely friends from the Wixams Retirement Village; it was wonderful to see different generations working together to make sure the bulbs were happy in their new homes. In the spring we’ll see the fruits of our work when those beautiful flowers start to bloom and add a splash of colour to Wixams.

We had some great comments from parents and the kids seemed to really enjoy the experience. Gardening is very rewarding, it can also be therapeutic for some, so we hope to have inspired a few of our residents to enjoy nature at a very young age.

There are some important Thank Yous down below but a special thank you needs to go to Karin who planned the whole thing and shared a huge amount of gardening advice, in order to give this project the best possible chance of success. Karin is a very hard working lady and she gave up a lot of her own time on this project and did the most physical work in the prep sessions.

We’re incredibly proud to say that this event was even featured in the Bedford Independent!

You can have a have a read about this project below or skip to the bottom for some wonderful photos from the event.

Preparation

There was a lot of preparatory work required to get this project off the ground. Over the last few months a few members of the Wixams Gardening Group have been meeting fortnightly to prepare the areas for planting. This started with a lot of weeding, removing of dead shrubs and we then moved a lot of the grasses from the areas next to the Village Hall to create a nice border. Finally, the day before the event we met one last time to loosen the soil and to dig out the holes for the bulbs to go in.

You can see some great before and after shots of the prep work on the Wixams Gardening Group page.

The event

We invited everyone to arrive at 10 am whereupon we gave them a little brief, some instructions and then sent them off to our 5 planting areas where they got stuck right in, rather enthusiastically in some cases! In the holes they added some compost, then the bulbs, more compost on top and finally they filled the holes back in.

There were 5 main areas in which we worked:

In areas 1-3 we planted tulips and daffodils in alternating (hopefully) rows, daffodils in area 4 and crocuses in area 5.

Altogether we planted around 1000 bulbs!

Some thank yous

The event could not have gone ahead without some very busy people giving up their time to help us. As well as the thanks to Karin, huge thank you also goes to Adriana for her help on the prep sessions, ordering the bulbs and for creating the lovely fliers and content for the Wixams Newsletter. We’d like to thank everyone else who has helped preparing the ground for this event, including a special mention to Curly for his hard work and positive spirit.

Thanks go to Asan (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com) for all the hard work taking and editing the excellent photos. Thank you Paula and Sheila for providing the much needed refreshments and biscuits for our participants on the day. We’d like to also thank our friends from the Wixams Walkers who helped us run the day and showed everyone where they needed to plant the bulbs. The Wixams Community Group would like to send a big thank you to Colin and the rest of the Lakeview Village Hall Committee for funding this project.

Finally, we’d like to thank every single person who came out to take part in this event. By working together we have achieved something wonderful which will make people smile as they walk past our flowers next year.

Free gifts for all participants

The planting didn’t stop at just the event itself, we gave out a small bag of daffodil bulbs to everyone who took part. We hope they’ll enjoy putting them into their own gardens and it will remind them of their contribution to the Wixams community.

There were 66 bags, each with around 20 bulbs inside…

That’s another 1300 bulbs!

Press Coverage

This project has been covered by the Bedford Independent, you can find the story here: www.bedfordindependent.co.uk/wixams-residents-spring-into-action-at-bulb-planting-event/

Photos

Here’s some of the great photos from before and during this event, and of a clever little robin looking for food after everyone had left.

Spring is Here

It’s been a very wet winter and due to the clay soil Wixams is built on we had some real concerns about whether our bulbs would survive. We’re very pleased to show some recent photos and it looks like our flowers are strong fighters!

 

The very first Halloween Decorations Competition was a resounding success, with dozens of houses around Wixams covered in a wide range of spooky props. We saw many skeletons, spiders, cobwebs, witches (including a set of legs poking out of a cauldron), ghosts, grave stones, light shows and a lot of excellently carved pumpkins. Wixams has already become famous for getting into the Halloween spirit (pun intended) so everyone should give themselves a pat on the back for helping to create a fantastic community-led event.

Some thank yous

We’d like to give a huge thank you to Michelle at Budgens in Wixams for donating the prize for this competition, she was super helpful throughout and Budgens have been very generous. Another big thank you goes to my sister Amanda who did a fantastic job of putting all the prize items into a great Halloween themed hamper. We’d also like to thank Asan (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com) who came along with the judges and took some excellent photos for us. Finally, a big thank you goes to the judges who took a few hours of their time to help us select a shortlist and then covered a few thousand steps so we could pick the winner. Thank you Cecilia, Barbara, Saqhib, Trish, Paula, Karin and Adriana 🙏🏼

The prize

We put together a bumper hamper of goodies for our winners, including drinks, chocolates, snacks and more…

The winners also received a trophy, ‘Scariest House in Wixams 2019’, which they can show off for years to come!

And the winner is…

We’re pleased to announce the winning home is the colourful house on Brooklands Avenue. The judges were very impressed by the variety of spooky items on display, lots of cobwebs and the overall impact of the lights display. A big congratulations goes to them and we hope they enjoy their prize.

Other contenders

There were a lot of fantastic homes to choose from this year, the judges really were split in deciding the winner. Here are some photos of a few of the other contenders we considered and some other great scenes on display: