Monthly Archives: June 2020

11Jun

Win a €100 ShopLK voucher! Keep it local. Keep it beautiful. Entries now CLOSED.

Keep it local. Keep it beautiful!

How to win a 100 euro ShopLK voucher.

We are running a campaign called ‘Keep it local. Keep it beautiful’, in which we encourage people to pick up a few items of litter while out enjoying your local area.  Whether you pick up a couple of cans or do a full scale neighbourhood litter pick, it all makes a big difference.  Just be sure to keep to social distancing guidelines (see below for further details).

As an added incentive, we are offering two 100 EURO ShopLK vouchers (sponsored by Magees Pharmacy).

The first category is ‘Best Clean Up’, which will include photographs of areas which have been improved thanks to your litter picking efforts. If you can include ‘Before’ and ‘After’ photos, that would be ideal, but don’t worry if you don’t have a ‘Before’ picture, just tell us about your clean up and you’ll be entered in this category. See below for an example, surely you can do better than this!

The second category is for the photo which best showcases the beauty of your local area.  Could  be a view, could be animals (domestic, farm or wildlife), could be the people you love, could be a building or a piece of outdoor artwork – the choice is yours!

Please note that if you already entered before the introduction of separate categories, there is no need to enter again, as your photos are already entered in the appropriate category.

Once you have taken your photo(s), just post it on our Facebook page or email to lktidy@gmail.com and include a short description of the photo(s), your name and contact phone number in the email.  If you prefer to post your photo(s) then please send to Gerard McCormick, Magees Pharmacy, 27 Upper Main Street, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, F92 E30F also providing a short description of each photo, your name and contact phone number. The competition closes at 12 midnight on July 5th.

Keeping your area beautiful!

If you would like to make a contribution to keeping your area beautiful, you can get grabbers, bags and gloves by contacting Gerard or Eileen in Magees Pharmacy on (074) 9121409.  Or you can just pick up a few items as you spot them and place them in your own bin.  Please be sure to follow the government guidelines below.

Government Guidelines

As of phase 2 of the Government’s roadmap to easing the COVID-19 restrictions, the official advice from the National Spring Clean campaign is as follows:-

• Only small groups to take part (up to 15 people, provided all activity is outdoors)
• Strict 2m social distance maintained
• Stay within your allowable distance
• Hand sanitising essential before and after the clean-up
• Use your own gloves, and don’t share your litter picker if you’re using one
• Make sure gloves/ litter pickers are clean before/ after clean up
• Do not collect any discarded PPE or tissue paper

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10Jun

The Flowering Of Church Lane – by Donnan Harvey

 

The mission statement of Letterkenny Cathedral Quarter is to regenerate the historic Church Lane street and surrounding areas to create a vibrant Historic Cultural Quarter in the heart of Letterkenny. Our Cathedral Quarter committee is only small in number and we would not have been able to achieve our goals without the support and assistance of other groups in the town.

Letterkenny Tidy Towns have played a substantial role in assisting us to make the Church Lane street as attractive as possible. One way we have done this is through installing flower boxes all along with Lane and this is an excellent example of how different Community groups can work together on the one project. The Tidy Towns have sponsored the flowers while Letterkenny’s Men Shed made the wooden boxes, which we put the flowers into.

No. 2 Church Lane

It is a really big day when the flowers land in the Cathedral Quarter and it is a true sign that summer is with us. The flowers are expertly prepared in the greenhouses of Alcorns Garden Centre and were really blooming when they arrived with us. It takes us a few days to put all the flowers out on the Lane, first putting the boxes on the window sills at ground level and on the second day, we erected the boxes on the first floor level.

Helpers
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As part of the historic towns Initiative, hooks were installed on the window ravels and so when the flower boxes were installed, we tied wire across them so they were secured. With each year, the flower arrangement gets brighter and bigger and Charlie Grant from Tidy Towns has been absolutely brilliant in arranging this transition. Charlie has planned that we will grow wild flowers on the coping of the stone walls that surrounds Grieve fields so the Church Lane will continue to be very colourful over the next few years.

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To ensure the flowers remain vibrant all summer long, they must be continuously watered and here again, tidy towns have really helped out the Cathedral Quarter so this can be done. A watering machine was purchased so I didn’t have to go up a ladder to water the flowers that were up on a height. Similarly, they installed a Water Harvesting System at the back of No.3 Church Lane so the rainwater is collected and is used for watering the flowers.

It was really unfortunate that the National Tidy Competition is not happening this summer because no doubt the judges would be very impressed by the flower arrangement and all the work done under the Historic Towns Initiative. What is more impressive that the flowers themselves is the co-operation between Cathedral Quarter and the Tidy Towns in making this happen. It illustrates what happen when two organisations come together work on a project and the leadership shown by Letterkenny Tidy Towns is an example to all other Tidy Towns organisations across the country.

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