Featured

Summer Is Here and It’s Brought With It Some Updates In The Garden

A huge thank you to everyone who came together over the weekend to help tidy up the garden, with Angela and Andy leading the charge!

The parasols have been brought out of winter storage and laundered and placed at the tables to bring shade from the sun – and shelter for the showery days.

All benches and tables have been scrubbed, cleaned and treated to protect them from the elements. A few benches required some minor repairs and tightening up of bolts etc. Finally the tables were stained and varnished to ensure they are looking their best. Please be aware the drying time of the varnish can be variable so please check they are dry before taking a seat!

Debris and rubbish was removed from the garden, ground sheets, cardboard and general litter was all removed during a team effort that swept through the whole garden and the garden side of Foremont Terrace Lane.

A huge thanks to everyone who was able to spare some time and help the Committee with the updates; Frank, Roland, Chris & Katrina, we couldn’t have done it without you and you’ve played a part in keeping the garden beautiful for all residents 💗

Featured

Crown Road South Gate Re-opened

Great News! 

The gate on Crown Road South has been repaired and this entrance is now useable again.

We are grateful to committee member Andy who repaired this with the help of Frank McKee without huge expense, and it’s now ready for all residents.

The committee will continue to look into future lock and gate options in due course.

It’s been great to see so many residents using the garden during the lovely weather. 

Please continue to share any ideas and suggestions with us via email hello@crown.garden

Featured

Please Take Care of Our BBQ Area

As I’m sure we can all agree, looking after our gardens is everyone’s responsibility. Sadly not every resident is currently taking that good sense approach.

Damage & costly repair

This has now caused damage to our BBQ area that had to be repaired, a cost that could have been avoided with some simple care.

burning hot coals added to BBQ area directly and abandoned

This damage was caused by a resident adding their coals to the BBQ slate area directly. The intense heat has cracked the slate in multiple places.

cracked slate after burning hot coals on top

This same resident also did not clear up the burned out mess after them.

Easy solution

This cannot be repeated. The BBQ area was not designed to take hot coals directly. It is simply a safe place to sit disposable BBQ kits, the type with tinfoil trays full of coals and a grill to hold food.

examples of disposable BBQ grill kits that can be used on our BBQ area

Clean-up

Four of these disposable BBQ kits were also left abandoned by residents. Again, please clear up after yourself once you have enjoyed a lovely summer BBQ.

A committee member has cleaned all of this up for you. But to be clear, this is not the role of any committee member. They are simply volunteers elected to help manage the upkeep of the gardens. It is up to all residents themselves to clean up and take away everything they brought into the garden on each trip.

If we all clear up after ourselves in this way, we each do our bit to keep our garden beautiful and functional for the next resident looking forward to sharing a BBQ with family and friends on a lovely warm day.

Thanks for understanding.

Volunteers Wanted – Come and Join us in the garden this weekend!

On Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th we are hoping to give the garden a bit of a spruce up to ensure everything is looking good for this continuing good weather. We will be litter picking, doing some minor furniture maintenance and a few other small jobs.

If you can spare some time please join us anytime between 10-2 tomorrow or Sunday. 

Thanks so much in advance for your support. 

Please bring garden or household gloves if you have them

Your 2022 Garden Upkeep Fees

Back in spring this year we updated everyone via the newsletter on our plans for ingathering of garden upkeep fees going forward.

Fee Payment Timeline

As you may recall, the changeover of committee last year led to a much later call for annual garden upkeep fees than is the norm. The call for 2021 fees came out at end of November 2021 as a result.

We reassured everyone then that, given the pandemic disruptions, we would ensure that the 2022 fees would not be invoiced until a similar later time, and then return to the more usual timeline of summer months from 2023.

So today we can advise that this all remains in place as promised. Fee invoices covering the period 1 August 2022 to 31 July 2023 have now been issued to everyone, the bulk to the email addresses provided and, for the few where no email address has been provided yet, hand-delivered to you.

More Payment Options

The other promise we made is to offer you more options for paying your garden fees. Many have expressed how awkward they find it to settle their fees using bank transfers and cheques. So we are delighted to advise that all billing details have now been migrated into Stripe, our new payment merchant.

This move into Stripe will make it far easier to settle your garden upkeep fees, using your debit/credit card, and ApplePay or GooglePay if you use these on your devices. Please note that all of your personal payment methods are handled privately and securely by Stripe and not seen or stored on our committee systems. We only see what’s due and what’s paid.

For anyone who prefers to settle fees by bank transfer or cheque, as before, this of course remains an option, and full details are on the footer of your invoice.

Updating Your Details

We are grateful to those residents who have already reached out to advise of updates needed to our garden fee records.

Inevitably there will always be some churn of residents, and not every changeover lands with us at the time, perfectly understandable at such a busy period! So it’s always good to catch up with this. Just reach out to us at hello@crown.garden if anything needs updated.

You can also provide your update via our simple form

Help Paying Arrears

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to collect these, a great many Association members have not been able to settle their garden upkeep fees for previous years. We are now in the process of moving these unpaid bills into our new payment system and so we will also be issuing arrears invoices soon. We do need these funds to continue to maintain and develop your gardens on your behalf, so we will be grateful for the timely settlement of these if/when they are issued to you.

If you are having difficulty settling your fees please be reassured that we want to help. It is now even easier for us to agree a payment plan with you via our Stripe payment merchant, at no extra cost to you. If you wish to discuss payment plan options please contact us on hello@crown.garden – and please simply quote your invoice number to get things rolling. We fully understand, and only want to help.

Our Thanks

Thanks also to some residents who have already promptly paid their 2022 fees. It’s always appreciated, especially when there is so much to do in the gardens at the moment. Thanks also for the very positive feedback we have already received on the new easier ways to pay via Stripe.