If you have a pile of easy to clean bricks sitting on your driveway and want to get rid of them, donate them to Packe Street Park where volunteer gardeners will make good use of them.
Peggy Kelly described what happens to the bricks in a letter:
We need more bricks in Packe Street please.
Since we last begged for bricks St Albans people have been generous with their donations. Over the last few months small deposits have been left at the entrance to Packe Street Park – transported by the boot-load and given anonymously.
On Thursdays the volunteer gardeners barrow them to the building site where Patricia leads the cleaning and stacking operation.
But work has been going on so well that, I’m sorry to say, we are again running short of bricks.
At the end of July, by the time Angela and Chris had put the finishing touches to the fourth rotunda, the first was already filled with sieved soil and sown with three kinds of carrots and an inner circle of onions.
The seeds came to us from the Waikanae Beach Garden Group – a community spirited lot in the North Island who have twinned with Packe Street Park as their way of giving practical and personal support to Christchurch. They also sent us some money from their AGM sales table to spend on plants etc.
The unexpected generosity of people is magical; a few weeks ago I got a call in the dark hours of early morning from Calvin offering to bring a load of sand, shingle and cement because he could see that we “needed it”. Later in the day he and Peter turned up with the promised cargo, helped get the first rotunda started and would take no payment for the materials.
We have since used some of the Waikanae Beach Garden Group money to replenish the sand and cement supplies. And by the way, we have been experimenting with various combinations of sand, silt and cement because we have plenty of silt stock piled.
Now we need to pave between the rotundas to make it easy for people to access the new raised vegetable beds. We need a good many more bricks to do this work. If you can bring us some easy-to-clean chimney bricks and leave them at the entrance to the park your effort will be much appreciated….. and applauded!
Packe Street Park and Community Garden is a “pick and share” place open to the public all the time; here anyone may pick the fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers…….we take only enough for our immediate needs and make sure to leave some for others. Two years ago I saw this philosophy nicely demonstrated; for a few days the last, small pumpkin lay on its withered stalk and then one morning half was gone and the remainder, clean-cut, lay on the shed veranda. I have to admit, I took it home…..all of it…..but I did sow a few more seeds.
So, now we need some more bricks; thank you for giving what you can spare. And thank you for helping us create our “Commemorative Chimney Pieces” – our memorial to Old St Albans.
Peggy Kelly, Contact for Volunteer Gardeners. kellysykes@xtra.co.nz Tel. 3663844
