News on In Our Nature

Earlier this year we hosted a social media competition where we invited people to tell us who they’d like to nominate as their “community hero” - someone in their local area who has gone above and beyond to benefit others in their community. One of three winners, Victoria has run the independent Chorlton Bookshop for over 35 years, and alongside her voluntary group she plays a key role in protecting and developing local green spaces for everyone to enjoy. We caught up with Victoria a few weeks ago to learn more about the brilliant work she’s been doing and why green spaces are so important to her….

How long have you been here for now (at the Chorlton Bookshop)?

About 35 years now!

How long have you been active with greening work in the local area?

Probably since the campaign to protect Turn Moss came about, so about 4 years ago now. When it came under threat, they thought that massive areas of it would be fenced off and that people would have to pay to access it. It’s a beautiful open space, and to be able to go on there doesn’t cost you anything. It’s so open that you can do whatever you want on there. You can play sports, you can walk your dog, it’s full of birds and wildlife. It’s amazing when you consider how close it is to quite a condensed urban area. It’s a wonderful place and it links up with Chorlton Meadows so you can go over to Stretford and go on the transpennine route. I’ve known it for years since I was little, I was raised in Sale and my dad’s route to work was on Hawthorn lane which is the old backroad that used to link Stretford to Chorlton. So I remember it from being a little girl, and it was agricultural and open fields then, and I knew it very well. The thought that people wouldn’t be able to use it for years and years, I didn’t want to sit back and let that happen. r

What are some of the benefits you experience by protecting green spaces?

Well it’s about protecting it and encouraging people to use it. We get kite festivals and that sort of thing as well, we get people from all sorts of backgrounds just enjoying the space and enjoying the fact that it’s free. We’ve done things like put benches up and we’ve put a toilet in that can be used if we have events on. We also have a very active Facebook group, and Twitter and Instagram pages, so we all sort of talk to one another. So many people don’t know it’s there. A teacher said to me when I first started volunteering that she had children in her classes who had never been to a nature space that didn’t have a fence around it, and I thought that was awful for kids not to be able to just run about and choose what they’d like to do. If you’re feeling fed up you can prescribe your own walk, you don’t have to follow a path.

How do you associate what you’re doing with climate change?

We do consider climate change in any of the plans that we have. We try to discourage all of the footballers from driving their cars to games. The trees that we plant, we really thought hard about what varieties to plant, looking at native species. The land is mostly landfill so we were looking at trees that could cope with polluted ground. We have a Manchester Poplar as well, which is Manchester’s rarest native tree. They cope with water and pollution, the same as alders will cope with water, so we planted loads of alders and we’ve taken cuttings from our black poplar and planted about thirty new black poplars which cope really well with air pollution and flooding.

What advice would you give to people who’d like to get involved with green spaces?

I suppose they can always contact us! Most of the parks also have friends groups who run regular sessions and you don’t really need any skills. We’re also very friendly! If you were thinking of getting involved in any local groups I’d have a look on Facebook and try to get out and do a little bit of volunteering. There are loads of people with expertise who’ll be able to give you some basic training, but it doesn’t take much at all really. We’ve got people who’ve never picked a spade up or used shears or anything. Enthusiasm and being able to cope with a bit of rain, that’s all it is really!

Know someone in your local community who you'd like to shine a light on? Let us know by emailing oliver@hubbub.org.uk - and you can find out more about Victoria's Turn Moss group by visiting their Facebook page here.