THESE ARE OUR PLANS AND GOALS FOR THE COMING YEAR UNDER THE TIDY TOWNS COMPETITION JUDGING CATEGORIES
Please read through our plans and hopes and if you can help out in any way please feel free to contact us on info@greystonestidytowns.ie or through our contact page
Involvement in the community is key to our success. As we have done in the past we help out in any way we can at community events like the Great Bear Challenge and our annual daonation of the Christmas tree.
We have a very good relationship with the local schools & hope to build on this over the coming year by involving the students in our projects and our social media.
We will be liasing with the local secondary school again to involve the students in various surveys we want carried out like the water usage and food wastage surveys done in October last. Getting the students to help us with our social media, beach and town clean-ups, creating awareness among younger students about local wildlife & birds living in our environment, getting the message out there about climate change and the challenges that face us, are all topics that we hope to cover this year.
We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful town, and our goal in this category is to liase with both residents and commercial users to further enhance this environment. Floral displays are a vital addition to the town but we also have to stay on top of bent poles, peeling paint, grafitti and any other items that distract from the beauty of our town. We will continue to maintain the planters and planting beds throughout the town and organise the hanging baskets. The addition of the beautificaion of our Theatre Lane is a huge positive for the town.
Our focus here is on the conservation of natural wildlife areas and enhancing where necessary. Creation of Walks & Nature Trails to allow local access to these treasures without impacting on their habitat. The creation of information stands aboutlocal wildlife in different areas. Bird nesting boxes and insect hotels are also on the cards. Watch out for our “Bugs Green” on Rathdown Rd. with hotels etc
Mill Lane, Picnic Site, St Crispins,3 Trouts Stream, are among the areas where we will be working.
Big projects in this category include The Burnaby Park, Crowe Bank, Trees on Mill Rd., the 2 anchors at the Harbour, and St Crispins. We have numerous other smaller beds around the town, like the railings under the Charlesland Roundabout which we started last year and plan to continue with the same planting scheme this year on the other side. We were donated a number of Agapanthus plants and are putting them under the trees on Watson/Johnson and the trees at the South Beach toilet. We will be planting a colonade of trees similiar to those along by the South Beach Car-Park sponsored by Johnson Staunton Garage along the front of Shorline Leisure Centre. We are continuing with our bed at the picnic field which will feature plants suitable for birds, bees and all wildlife. We also plan to plant some fruit trees perhaps cherry and plum.
Tidiness & litter control are a big part of Tidy Towns. This is of huge importance to our town as this is one of the first things visitors and locals comment on. Tidiness includes weeds, graffiti and dog fouling. We have had problems in the past with graffiti but this year we are getting a lot more serious. We have Started our Graffiti Alert campaign which can be read about on our OperationTransformation page. We will be launching our Annual Dog Fouling Campaign in the coming weeks. Weeds are a year round problem and coming into their own now in the spring. We will be tackling these on the roads and streets in the coming weeks. We will be encouraging home & business owners to help us out in this area by keeping outside their premises litter & weed free. We will be having regular clean-up days for both the beach and streets.
We will continue to post relevant information on our facebook page with regards to food waste, water conservation recycling etc, This is one area where we will be availing of the help of transition year students to carry out surveys for us on how we can all become more environmentally aware. This year we are launching our Reusable Cup Campaign called Every Cup Counts! Greystones. visit www.greystonescupscount.ie for more info.
We are in the process of compiling an up to date database on all our Resident Associations. These will be linked to our site. We have a very good relationship with all the Residents Association and help out where needed. There are a number of areas especially outside estates that we will be looking at and hopefully engaging with the local residents to improve on the overall appearance. This will impact greatly on the value of property in the area.
We have quiet a number of approach roads that we look after, coming south from Windgates, west from Killincarraig and north from Charlesland. The roundabouts coming in from Charlesland, the Welcome to Greystones Beds & Crowe Bank are among the areas where we will be doing some extra work this year. Tree planting outside Shoreline will also fall into this category.