Latest news with #Gardens
The Herald Scotland
21 hours ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Edinburgh set to get £140,00 refund over Hogmanay wash-out
Three days of outdoor events were wiped out by prolonged high winds between December 29 and 31. Read more: However the city council has still not managed to recover any of the £812,456 it put into last year's four-day Hogmanay festival. An official report for the city council has also revealed that is still to be paid more than £250,000 in fees from last year's Christmas and new year festivals. However councillors have been told that "in excess of £140,000" is expected to be recouped once the insurance claim over the cancellations is settled, while the council said there is a "clear expectation" that it will all the money it is due from various charges, including traffic orders and the rental of key sites including Princes Street Gardens. Edinburgh's Hogmanay fireworks were called off last year. (Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire) The new figures have emerged after it was announced that an overall audience of 2.8 million had been attracted to the city centre over the festive season, which has been valued at £198 million to the economy. Unique Events and Assembly were last May awarded a joint contract to produce the Christmas and new year events for up to five years. While the Christmas festival is expected to be run on a commercial basis, the £812,456 council grant is expected to help pay for the Hogmanay festival, which costs around £3.56 million to stage. Key costs in the budget include £314,000 for a torchlight procession on December 29, £137,000 for a Night Afore Disco Party in Princes Street Gardens on December 30, £890,000 for the Concert in Gardens on Hogmanay and £1.49m for the main street party on Princes Street on Hogmanay. However the fire parade was called off around 5pm, shortly before it was due to set off, due to the wind speeds being recorded in the city centre. The plug was pulled on the other outdoor events and the planned midnight fireworks display just after 3pm on December 30 due to the weather conditions hampering the set up of the main arena and stages across the city centre. All planned indoor events were able to go ahead as planned at venues including the Assembly Rooms, the Assembly Hall, St Giles' Cathedral and the National Museum of Scotland. Councillors have been told that the event organisers had been in 'constant communication with their insurers between December 29 and 31. The report for the council's culture committee said: 'It is anticipated that the council will be able to recover some of the grant funding released to support Edinburgh's Hogmanay. 'Due to the events that did take place and the ongoing insurance claim for the cancelled outdoor 2024/25 events, this figure is not currently available but is expected to be in excess of £140,000. 'The council receives fixed fee rental income from Unique-Assembly for the delivery of Edinburgh's Christmas dependent upon land made available to the successful contract holder. In addition, the council receives significant income from charges. Council charges, including fixed fee income, rentals, hires, licensing, planning permission, building warrants and traffic management orders for the 2024-25 winter festivals 2024/25 represented an income to the council of £668,595 of which £418,700 has currently been paid. 'The council is in ongoing discussions with the contractor in relation to any outstanding payments due with a clear expectation that all relevant contractual sums will be settled. 'The council is aware of the terms of the contract and the potential remedies available to it and will continue to take appropriate steps to recover sums in line with the contract.' A spokesperson for Unique Events and Assembly said: 'There will be a financial return to CEC following completion of the insurance process. 'In light of last year's extreme weather conditions, we will continue to adapt and evolve the four-day Hogmanay events programme to maintain the city's reputation as a premier new year celebration.'
Associated Press
20-05-2025
- General
- Associated Press
Applications Now Open: Nature's Path Marks 15 Years of Gardens for Good to Support Organic Community Gardens
RICHMOND, BC, May 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ - Nature's Path Organic Foods, North America's largest independent organic breakfast food brand, is now accepting applications for its annual Gardens for Good: Plant it Forward grant. For 15 years, the program has supported organic community gardens, and this year will award $6,500 grants to 20 gardens across the U.S. and Canada—totaling over $100,000 in funding. Rooted in the belief that collective action creates real change, Gardens for Good helps local urban gardens combat food insecurity and expand access to fresh, organic food in their communities. 'As we kick off another year of the program, we're proud to celebrate 15 years of impact and reaffirm our commitment to making organic food accessible to all,' says Jyoti Stephens, Vice President of Mission and Strategy at Nature's Path. 'Community gardens are at the heart of that mission. They nourish neighborhoods with fresh, healthy food and help build a more just and equitable food system. We believe organic food should be a right, not a privilege.' Since 2010, Gardens for Good has awarded nearly $1 million to over 100 gardens across North America, slated to reach its 2028 goal nearly three years early. Last year, 100% of the Plant it Forward grant recipients were gardens serving underrepresented and underserved communities. This year, the program will again strongly encourage gardens that serve underrepresented and underserved communities to apply. Ten gardens in the U.S. and ten in Canada will receive grants. Applicants must be registered non-profits, and past recipients are welcome to apply if they received a grant before 2020. 'Our mission goes beyond the school garden, to nurture socio-emotional growth, foster environmental awareness, cultivate an appreciation for nourishing foods, and inspire youth to become active leaders in their communities,' said Nicole Porto, co-director of Land to Learn Garden and 2025 Gardens for Good grant recipient. 'Nature's Path's generous support helps us deliver our unique garden-based, experiential learning to over 2,000 children and teens each year. For that, we are deeply grateful.' Eligible organic community gardens can learn more about the Gardens for Good program and are encouraged to submit applications to apply for this year's grant by June 17, 2025, through the following link: ABOUT NATURE'S PATH ORGANIC FOODS Nature's Path Organic Foods is a privately held, family-owned company, producing USDA and Canadian Certified Organic, Regenerative Organic Certified and Non-GMO Project Verified breakfast, baking, and snack foods sold in grocery and natural food stores in over 50 countries around the world. Committed to the triple bottom line— socially responsible, environmentally sustainable and financially viable, Nature's Path works diligently to support communities and champion the cause of people and planet. Brands include Nature's Path®, Nature's Path Flour®, Anita's Organic Mill®, Love Crunch®, Qi'a®, Que Pasa®, Flax Plus®, EnviroKidz®, and Love Child Organics®. Founded in 1985, Nature's Path is headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia and employs hundreds of valued team members at its three facilities in Canada and the United States. For more information, visit or follow on X @NaturesPath and Instagram @NaturesPathOrganic. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Nature's Path Foods Inc.
The Sun
06-05-2025
- The Sun
Exotic English gardens lost for centuries is named one of the best in the UK
THE Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall has been named one of the best in the UK. The gardens after 'lost' as a result of World War I - but has just won a King's Award. 5 5 The Lost Gardens of Heligan was first developed in the mid-18th century and were cultivated by the Tremayne family, with the creation of rides for horses, walled flower gardens, and a melon yard. It was thriving up until World War I, when the Heligan gardens were left to ruin. The 'lost years' were between 1914 and 1990 when they were rediscovered and the restoration project became one of the biggest garden transformations in Europe. The year 1991 marked the restoration of the Italian Garden, and the Lost Gardens of Heligan officially opened to the public on Good Friday in 1992. In 1994, the Flower Garden was restored and in 2024, The Lost Gardens of Heligan welcomed its eight millionth visitor. The Lost Gardens of Heligan is split into three parts and is home to the UK's only outdoor jungle which has exotic plants. In the jungle are four ponds, giant rhubarb, banana plantations, bamboo forests and avenues of palm trees. The jungle has a microclimate which is at least five degrees warmer than gardens in the north of the UK . It's where you'll also find one of the longest Burmese Rope Bridges in Britain, stretching 100 feet above ancient tree ferns. The Pleasure Grounds were first laid out 200 years ago - they have historic pathways and plants. The seaside town of Newlyn in Cornwall has been dubbed as one of the 'coolest' places to relocate 5 5 Some plantings are over 150 years old, and are home to the national collection of camellias and rhododendrons which were introduced to Heligan pre-1920. Like many gardens in Cornwall, Heligan reaps the benefits from a mild climate. The Productive Garden has 300 varieties of fruit, vegetables, salad and herbs which supply the on-site kitchen and are incorporated within the daily lunch menu. The Lost Gardens of Heligan is now one of the best gardens in the UK and in May 2025 was honoured with a King's Award for Enterprise. Laura Smit-Chesterfield, managing director of The Lost Gardens of Heligan, said: "The team at The Lost Gardens of Heligan are delighted, honoured, and proud to receive a King's Award for Enterprise." That's not the only award it has won - over the years, The Lost Gardens of Heligan has been named Britain's Finest Garden and the Best Garden in the UK. Tickets for The Lost Gardens of Heligan for adults are £28, children between 5 and 17 are £12.50, and children under five go free. Here's another pretty 'secret' garden in England that is more like going to China and Egypt. And six exotic UK gardens you can visit year round where it feels like the Caribbean - even in winter.
Los Angeles Times
09-04-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
How one woman is doggedly transforming a trash patch into a fragrant habitat garden
Some people see trash and weeds and walk on by. Others rail against the slobs of the world, or agencies that don't do their jobs. And some, like environmental scientist Marie Massa, roll up their sleeves and get to work. In Massa's case, that's meant spending six to nine hours a week since early 2023 working mostly alone to transform a long, trash-filled strip of no-man's land between Avenue 20 and Interstate 5 in Lincoln Heights into a fragrant, colorful habitat of California native plants. She's named the garden the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor and features it on her Instagram page, ave20nativeplants, exulting every time she spots a native bee, caterpillar or some other creature visiting the space for food or shelter. 'You see all these horrible things happening in the world,' she said, 'the loss of rainforests, of plants and animals and insects. ... It's so much and sometimes I can't handle all this bad news,' Massa said. 'That's why I feel compelled, because I can make a difference here.' Massa is slender and just 5 feet tall in her work boots, with strands of gray lightening her dark hair. Years ago, she helped build the Nature Gardens at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. She wrote about wildflower blooms for the Theodore Payne Foundation's Wild Flower Hotline and volunteered to help renovate UCLA's extraordinary Mathias Botanical Garden, a project that was completed in 2024. These days Massa is a stay-at-home mom to Caleb, age 8. Her husband, Joseph Prichard, one-time lead singer for the L.A. punk band One Man Show Live, now runs his own graphic design company, Kilter. Most weekdays, Massa walks her son to and from school, makes her husband's lunch and tends her own private garden. But Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between 8:30 and 11:30 a.m., Massa becomes a determined eco-warrior. With her garden gloves, buckets, hand tools and a spongy cushion to protect her knees as she weeds, Massa is doggedly transforming a strip of public land roughly 8 feet wide and around 380 feet long — longer than a football field. She fills bags of trash from around her planting strip and calls 311 to have them hauled away. She drags 200 feet of hose to water her new plantings a few times a month, from a spigot made available by Alliance Susan & Eric Smidt Technology High School next door. She's spent days digging up garbage buried three feet deep in the garden and even muscled an old oven from the planting area to the curb after someone dumped it during the night. When graffiti appears on the retaining wall below the freeway, she takes a photo and uploads it to MyLA311 to get it painted over. She's lobbied for plant donations, potted up excess seedlings for people to carry home and recruited work parties for really big jobs, such as sheet mulching the parkway between the sidewalk and the street to keep weed seeds from blowing into the habitat corridor on the other side of the sidewalk. The project started slowly in the fall of 2022. As she walked Caleb to school, less than a mile from their Lincoln Heights home, Massa noticed this long strip of neglected land between the freeway's retaining wall and the sidewalk. 'It was full of weedy dried grasses, all kind of brown, and lots of trash,' Massa said. 'There were also four planter beds in the parkway [the strip of land between the sidewalk and street] with a few buckwheat and encelias (brittlebush), but every time the L.A. Conservation Corps came to mow the weeds down, they gave a huge horrible buzz cut to the native plants.' When the buckwheats in the parkway got mowed down, she said, they blew seeds into the wider planting strip on the other side of the sidewalk, and Massa said she noticed some buckwheat seedlings coming up, trying to make space for themselves among the weeds. 'I thought, 'Native plants could do really well here,' and I started developing this idea that the strip would be cool as a native plant garden.' That November, she bought some wildflower seeds and sprinkled them along the corridor, to see whether the soil would support their growth. After the heavy rains that winter, she was delighted to find them sprouting in the spring, fighting through the weeds along with buckwheat seedlings. She wrote a letter to people who lived near the untended land, outlining her idea to create a native plant garden to beautify the area and support pollinators. She invited neighbors to help her and included her email address. 'I didn't get any responses,' she said, 'but when I went out to weed, people would come up to me and say, 'We got your letter and this is a cool idea.'' In the spring of 2023, as her wildflowers were sprouting, Massa called the office of Los Angeles Council District 1 and told them about her project. She asked them to stop the Conservation Corps from mowing down the emerging plants and requested help from the Conservation Corps to suppress the weeds along the long strip of parkway between the sidewalk and street. The council agreed, so between May and October of 2023, Massa organized six work sessions to sheet mulch the parkway between the sidewalk and street, laying down cardboard and city-provided mulch with help from members of the L.A. Conservation Corps, Plant Community and Aubudon Society. The goal was to suppress the weeds on the parkway so they didn't add more seeds to the habitat she was trying to create on the other side of the sidewalk. 'The sheet mulching took a looong time,' she said, 'but I wanted the parkway to look nice, with cleaned up planters, so people could park along the street, easily get out of their cars and see the corridor.' But she still needed plants. She went to her former boss at the Natural History Museum's Nature Gardens, native plant guru Carol Bornstein, with her design, and Bornstein helped her choose colorful, fragrant and resilient native shrubs, perennials and annuals that could provide habitat for insects, birds and other wildlife. The response to her plant quest was heartening. The Los Angeles-Santa Monica Mountains Chapter of the California Native Plant Society gave her a $500 grant, and several nonprofit and for-profit nurseries donated plants, including the Audubon Center at Debs Park, Theodore Payne Foundation, Santa Monica Mountains Fund native plant nursery, TreePeople, Descanso Gardens, Plant Material, Hardy Californians, Artemisia Nursery and Growing Works Nursery, which even delivered the large cache of plants from its nursery in Camarillo to Lincoln Heights. By November she had more than 400 plants, and the help of a friend, Lowell Abellon, who wanted to learn more about native plants. Working about six hours a week, they slowly began adding plants to the 380-foot strip, weeding around each addition as they went. By March they had added about half the plants, but they had to stop before it got too warm. 'If you plant them too late, they don't have time to get good roots down into the ground [before it gets too hot],' she said. 'I tried to be on top of the watering, but during the summer about half of them died, so I had to do a lot of replacement planting in the fall.' During the summer, Massa mostly worked alone keeping the newly planted sections of the corridor weeded and watered. Because school was out, she brought her young son to help her each week. Sometimes neighbors with children would join them, she said, giving her son someone to play with, but once or twice, she resorted to offering him $5 for his weeding work. When school resumed in the fall, Massa was ready to start planting again, this time working mostly alone because her friend Abellon had a family emergency that took him out of state. She began in October, planting and weeding the rest of the corridor, including adding 100 plants to replace the ones that died. Now, in the garden's third spring, the plants are filling out. There are large mounds of California buckwheat, tall spires of sweet hummingbird sage and incandescently purple clusters of showy penstemon. Monkey flowers in orange and red, scarlet bugler, purple and white sages and coffeeberry shrubs are coming into their own. And there's so much California buckwheat Massa has had to thin out some of the plants and put them in pots for others to take home. She hopes her work will inspire others to create their own native plant gardens and even tackle a project like hers, beautifying a neglected public space. But she says it's important that people understand such work is more than a passion; it's a long-term commitment. Guerrilla gardeners have great intentions, she said, but it usually takes at least three years for a garden of native plants to get established, and those young plants will need water, whether it's a nearby water spigot or jerricans of water lugged to the site. 'If you just plant and go, you might as well throw the plants in a trash can, because it's not going to work,' Massa said. 'If you don't water them, if you don't weed and pick up trash, people aren't going to respect the space, especially if you don't put in the effort to keep it looking good. For a garden to be successful, you have to commit to putting in the work.' Massa's son goes to another school these days, but she figures she'll keep up her three-mornings-a-week schedule at the garden for at least another year, until she's confident the plants are established enough to thrive on their own. For instance, she wants to make sure the narrow leaf milkweed she planted gets big enough to attract endangered monarch butterflies and provide a place for them to lay their eggs and plenty of food for their caterpillars every year. 'My hope is that this will become a habitat that's self-sustaining,' she said, 'so I can step away and be OK just picking up trash every once in a while.' Will she start another project somewhere else? Massa rolled her eyes. 'My husband says I can't take on another project until this one is done, and this one has been a lot of work,' she said, laughing, 'buuuut I do actually have my eye on another spot.' And then suddenly she's serious, talking about this weedy strip on Main Street, not far from where she's working now. She's a little embarrassed, struggling to explain why she would want to tackle another lonely, thankless project, but defiant too, because, clearly, this is a mission. 'People in this neighborhood don't seem to know about native plants,' she said, 'so maybe I can show them their value, the value of having habitat and space around you that's beautiful. Maybe it could be a way of educating a new audience about the value of appreciating the environment.' Maybe so. Better watch your back, Johnny Appleseed.
CBC
11-02-2025
- Sport
- CBC
Longtime Maple Leafs PA announcer Paul Morris dies at 86
Paul Morris, who served as the Toronto Maple Leafs PA announcer for 38 years, has died. He was 86. Morris died Thursday in Oshawa after a lengthy illness, according to the Mount Lawn Funeral Home and Cemetery in Whitby. Born June 28, 1938, in Toronto, Morris spent his entire working career at Maple Leaf Gardens in the sound department as well as handling public address duties. Morris's deadpan delivery provided the backdrop to generations of Maple Leaf fans. Morris was at the microphone the last time the Leafs won the Stanley Cup in 1967, with Toronto defeating the visiting Montreal Canadiens 3-1 to win the series in six games. "Clarence Campbell, the president of the National Hockey League, will now present the Stanley Cup to the Toronto Maple Leafs," Morris said at the time. "It's home," Morris told the CBC in an interview that aired during Toronto's final game at Maple Leaf Gardens on Feb. 13, 1999. "It always has been home because my father (Doug, who became the Gardens' chief technician) started on the building when they put the shovel in the ground. And he was here until he died. "So our family, our whole life, right from the very first that I can remember, revolved around what was on at the Gardens." Morris acknowledged sadness at the end of the Gardens. "I also recognize that nothing goes on forever. Everything comes to an end sooner or later," he said. Morris retired at end of 1998-99 season Morris started with the junior Marlies in 1958 and was elevated in 1961, succeeding Red Barber as the Leafs' PA announcer. Barber had served as announcer from the building's opening in 1931. Morris retired at the end of the 1998-99 season, giving way to Andy Frost. "I'm proud of it," Morris, speaking of his job as PA announcer, told the Toronto Star in 2016. "I enjoyed having done it. It was a great job." Mike Ross became the Leafs' fourth PA announcer, beginning with the 2016-2017 season. "His was the voice I grew up hearing on Saturday nights sitting alongside my Grandpa. RIP Mr. Morris," Ross said in a social media post. The Toronto Maple Leafs posted on X Monday evening: "Paul never missed a game from 1961 to 1999. He called the first game at the Gardens, and was the first voice at Scotiabank Arena. More than an announcer, Paul was part of Leafs' history. His voice and legacy will forever echo in Leafs Nation."
