Welcome to our Winter 2023 Newsletter, which brings you the latest sustainable news and green ideas from our local area.

While the news from COP28 may have been mixed and confusing, there are still so many ways that we can help protect our planet on a local level - and have fun engaging with our local community and wildlife!

Over the last few months we’ve been busy planting, pollinating and pruning!

We now have three thriving raised beds growing vegetables, herbs, fruit and flowers. Our planting teams meet several times a week and we’ve been delighted to have so many local residents joining us.

Now we’re up and running, we’re starting a regular programme of events in the garden. So far, we’ve hosted a very successful fruit tree pruning session in the Community Orchard, led by Alex Laurie TRDC Tree Officer, who gave hands-on tips for caring for garden trees. We’ve also partnered with libraries across the district and had two really enjoyable joint sessions during Green Library Week, one offering a nature trail and story-time for youngsters and the other sharing poetry and talking about mental health issues with local residents, both in the garden and afterwards with refreshments at Ricky Library.

We’re also expanding our activities to help the TRDC grounds maintenance team to revitalise the Rose Garden (located opposite Three Rivers House and next to the Community Garden). This is very exciting and a work in progress. We’re hoping to not only add to the colour of the garden but also its biodiversity and climate resilience.

If you’d like to come and volunteer in the garden or help us out with organisation or communications, email us at:

hello@sustainablethreerivers.org.

We’re a friendly bunch! 

This is a chilly time of the year but there’s still lots going on in nature. Here are some ways you can get out in the fresh air and immerse yourself in the life of your garden…

●     Keep an eye out for hibernating creatures - if you’re tidying up areas of the garden, look out for hibernating frogs, toads, ladybirds, hedgehogs and spiders. As much as you can, try not to disturb them.

●     Make use of leaves - let dead leaves stay where they are, around the base of plants in borders. That will protect and nourish them as the leaves decompose.

●     Nurture your birds - feed them high fat foods (fat balls, seeds etc) and fresh, unfrozen water is vital for them to drink and bathe.

●     Grow microgreens – if you can’t face the elements, you can bring your garden inside by sowing mustard cress, coriander or pea shoots on a warm windowsill indoors, to use in winter salads.

Local Schools Embrace Sustainability

As many as 20 primary and secondary schools from around the district attended a recent Three Rivers Youth Council meeting, focused on eco themes. Student leaders were really enthusiastic and shared some of their sustainable projects. For instance, Yorke Mead primary school has run preloved uniform sales and built wormeries and Rickmansworth School has qualified for the Eco-Schools Green Flag award, a great achievement.

S3R Chair Rosi Jordon spoke briefly at the event and enjoyed hearing about students’ ideas.  “I was so impressed by how knowledgeable, animated and eager the youngsters were,” she said. S3R is planning to work with local schools to run a series of educational events in Ricky Community Garden in coming months, related to food and soil awareness and promoting biodiversity.

TRDC Residents Plant Trees for the Future

Hundreds of Three Rivers residents braved the rain on 9th December to collect free trees donated as part of Hertfordshire County Council’s ‘Your Tree Our Future’ scheme. Sustainable Three Rivers volunteers helped to man a tree pick-up point in the Aquadrome in Rickmansworth – one of twelve across the county.

In total, more than 70,000 trees were distributed across Hertfordshire. Once mature, these trees could take close to 125,000 tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere.

As well as helping to limit global warming, planting a tree provides shade in the summer, food and shelter for wildlife and adds colour and variety to your garden. This year, residents chose from 8 different tree species suited to the local environment and changing climate, including wild cherry, crab apple, rowan and silver birch, plus hedgerow packs providing up to 6 metres of hedgerow.

The scheme will run again next year, with 30,000 trees due to be given away in Hertfordshire. Anyone looking to take part can sign up now to receive an email when the window re-opens in Summer 2024 at:

www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/yourtree

Transition Streets is Up and Running!

You may have seen that the free energy and money saving programme: Transition Streets, is coming to Three Rivers. Well the exciting news is that it kicked off at the start of December with a first street in Rickmansworth!  

Over a cup of tea and biscuits – and facilitated by Sarah Burgess from GUCE – neighbours started working through the supportive handbook together, discussing how they’d like to progress and their vision for their street. They even came up with a simple solution to save water for one of the residents, making her life easier, saving money immediately and reducing waste water. The ideas kept flowing throughout the session for both the short and longer term and everyone left enthusiastic about tackling the energy section of the programme in January.

Transition Streets is a series of seven workshops, covering energy, food, water, resources, travel and biodiversity. Residents work through a comprehensive handbook together, with the support of a facilitator for the first and last workshops. On average, participants save more than £500 per household on annual bills and over 1 tonne of carbon, as well as fostering closer connections as neighbours and a community.

The first few streets to sign up in Three Rivers will receive free basic thermal images of their home after the energy session, to help identify possible problem areas. So get in quick!

Remember, you don’t have to get every house on your street involved and you also don’t have to all be on the same street! If you know 6-8 people that are keen to cut waste, save money and reduce their impact on the planet, then this is the scheme for you. For more details or to register: https://forms.gle/CKc1Z6EE8FRWiUJ29

Transition Streets is run through a partnership between TRDC and Grand Union Community Energy (GUCE), funded by Innovate UK.

Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Sustainable This Year!

With all the talk of COP28 in the news, you may be thinking about tweaks you can make to life from January onwards, that not only help your money go further but also reduce the strain on the planet.

If so, check out the HCCSP Sustainability Guide. You could choose one or two sections that resonate for you and focus on them for the next few months…

This helpful booklet was produced by the Hertfordshire Climate Change and Sustainability Partnership (HCCSP), a collaboration of all 11 councils in Hertfordshire, together with the Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership. It’s based on a guide originally commissioned for the region by Watford and Three Rivers Friends of the Earth.

We are Sustainable Three Rivers, a Community Interest Group founded by local residents, which aims to help people in Three Rivers make lifestyle changes to protect the planet.  We also work with local groups and projects linked to sustainability and campaign to influence government and local council decisions to protect the environment.

If you’ve got any ideas for sustainable solutions, or questions about any of the points we cover, we’d love to hear from you!

You can email us at hello@sustainablethreerivers.org