In July 2020 former Milford resident and parent of pupils at Milford School, Kate Tuck, called for volunteers to clear two allotments (and eventually a third) to create a “green space” for the children of the Milford Primary School to use. At the time the school only had a tarmac playground. A large number of volunteers, parents and pupils of the school but also other Milford residents, worked incredibly hard over the past 6 years and transformed the area into a beautiful space packed with things to encourage children (and adults!) to play outdoors and learn about the natural world. It has also encouraged community cohesion through the volunteer sessions and community events now held on it. Volunteers work on the Greenspace every Monday morning all year round, and many weekends. During term time there is a weekly Forest School for Milford School, and a weekly session for a special needs school in Derby (Maple View), but the site is open at all times for local children to use. There is a Chicken Group that organises a rota of parents and children to look after the chickens. Four formal community events are organised each year on the Greenspace now too. See the Greenspace website for more details on how the site has evolved since July 2020.
This is the latest periodic report on The Greenspace, giving highlights since the last report in October 2025. It is worth commenting that there is no road access to the Greenspace and every single item on it has had to be carried by hand to the site by the volunteers, up three flights of steps! Our major projects were the improvement of site safety and security through new fencing and gates, continued efforts to increase the number of flowers, vegetables and fruit on the site, and a new shed.
The far end of the site has always been unfenced and led into an abandoned allotment head high with brambles and nettles and a steep cliff. The fence around the rest of the site, now 6 years old, was leaning dangerously over the cliff. This obviously all presented a safety hazard to Greenspace users, so a grant for £350 to cover the raw materials for a new fence and gate at the end and replacement of the existing fence was applied for from Foundation Derbyshire. The application was successful, moreover, the Foundation was so impressed with The Greenspace and our achievements they increased the grant to £1000! This has allowed us to purchase many of the other things described below and a completely new set of tools & equipment.
Moving back to the end of site, before a fence and gate could be installed this needed to be cleared and levelled. This was a very difficult task, involving removing a compost heap, masses of huge tree roots and branches and piles of stones and took 4 volunteer sessions in December. In October Mark Hudson, a local landscape gardener, offered his services for free to saw down many overhanging tree trunks round the site perimeter and then in May, parent volunteer Howard Morris sawed down more overhanging trees and installed the new fence and gate at the end and replaced the fence round the whole site. The abandoned allotment adjacent to the end of the site has also now been cleared and cultivated (following an Allotments major work party) so the appearance of the whole area has been improved considerably.
Volunteers hard at work levelling and tidying the end of the site (Dec 2025)
The end of the site now
Moving on to efforts to increase the number of flowers, vegetables and fruit on the site in September we completed our gabion wall and filled it with flowers and bulbs (with a dual effect of stabilising the steep site and increasing the number of flowers) and installed a rose arch in the centre. This gabion/arch feature is now (July) absolutely full of colour and we are very pleased with it. In November we planted more ferns in the stumpery and 200 King Alfred daffodils, which combined with previous bulb plantings gave much colour in the Spring.
Hollyhocks in The Gabion Wall now
In November, as usual, we turned our compost heaps and spread the compost, mixed with chicken manure, on all our existing raised beds (see picture above). This mix continues to give us excellent crop yields (we are entirely organic on site), but we were limited to basically potatoes and onions because the chickens eat the rest, including our strawberries. So in March parent volunteer Ben Rogers created 4 new portable vegetable cages from materials bought by The Greenspace. These have allowed us to grow peas for the first time and to have much larger yields of strawberries. This year we also added two blackcurrant bushes.
Compost and chicken manure mix added to beds
Excellent onion crop 2025
New vegetable cages March 2026
Our existing small shed housed chicken feed and garden tools but due to the cramped conditions the tools were difficult to access, and it was rotting badly, allowing rats in. A resident of Belper offered a free, larger, shed in much better condition and another resident 12 slabs and, as ever, these were carried up the 3 flights of steps up to the site – no mean feat!
Over several weeks in April the site for the new shed was prepared, the children’s wigwam moved to make way, the site levelled, a slab base laid (to deter rats) and the new shed erected at the beginning of June. We have bought rat-proof metal bins to house the chicken feed and now have much more space to house the new tools and equipment we plan to buy with the Foundation Derbyshire grant. The old shed has been gleefully dismantled and burnt!
New shed being carried onto site
Finishing touches being added
The chickens are one of the main attractions for the children, who absolutely love them, and it also teaches them animal husbandry and where food comes from. We sourced 15 free slabs from Duffield & Belper residents, once again carried them up to the site along with builders sand, and on 18th October there was a large weekend working party to lay the slabs in chicken run to aid cleaning and deter rats.
Laying of new slabs on chicken coop floor
In addition to grants, an increasing source of income for us comes from the sale of plants nurtured from seedlings and cuttings from our gardens. Our stall at Belper Town Council’s Plant Fair on Belper Market Square on 10th May brought in £240 and our one at the Lubrizol (a local chemical research centre) Family Fun Day on 12th July 2025 £60. Lubrizol matched this amount as a donation and bought us a wildlife camera. We installed that and some bird boxes in January and were delighted to see baby blue tits fledge on the camera. When installing the camera and bird boxes we had to carry own stepladders onto the site. Local Amber Valley councillor Gez Kinsella gave us a £100 grant to buy a Greenspace set, which arrived at the end of June.
Greenspace volunteers being presented with new wildlife camera by Lubrizol
Wildlife camera being installed
Twice a year local landscape gardener Jonathan Beard drops a free large lorry load of chipped bark at the bottom of Church Steps which has to be bagged up (usually 150 x 50 litre bags) and carried up 3 flights of stairs by the volunteers. It’s worth the effort – the paths on the site remain dry, pleasant to walk on and weed free. The pictures below are from 2nd February.
Chipped bark spread on site.
The annual free Easter Trail organised by The Greenspace for the children, featuring 20 houses, was very popular.
