Local Mini Lending Library and Trees for Plashet Park - £5000

The project is a mini free lending library to be fixed to the blossom tree stump inside Plashet Park. The idea is for local residents to leave books that other community members and children can use, whether to read in the park or take home at no cost. It will benefit all users of the park but particularly children and families as well as residents of Woodhouse Grove, Lincoln Road, Shelley Avenue, Byron Avenue, Wordsworth Avenue, Plashet Grove,Tennyson Avenue, Shrewsbury Road and Rutland Road. The library will benefit an estimated 700 children per year and help promote literacy in a borough where more than half of children are in households facing poverty. The longer-term impacts include improved literacy in the borough, better wellbeing of young children and more space to promote and encourage reading.

The local lending library will require building a timber library to be fixed to the blossom tree stump as well as stepping stones to access the stump through the flower bed. In addition, some money will be spent on new trees to be planted by the greenspace team in the park to replace the diseased blossom that recently had to be cut down.