General Meeting Committee Report January 2016
Dear Residents,
Happy New Year to all! The Annual General Meeting of Rosmead Garden will be held on Monday 18th of January at 7.30pm. The meeting will take place at 105 Elgin Crescent. You are cordially invited to attend. This is the forum where we review the events of the year just gone and lay out our plans for the year ahead and we would very much welcome your presence and feedback.
A copy of the Agenda and the minutes of last year’s AGM are attached.
ROSMEAD RAILINGS
The railings project is all but complete. The physical work of rebuilding the wall, restoring the railings and replacing the gates is finished. We will release the final retention payment of £2,600 to Metalcraft- who did the railing work- shortly, once they have dealt with a couple of 'snags'. As reported last year the budget for the whole project was set at £147,000, which included £10,000 for replanting. We anticipate the final cost will be £135,000 in total. However the original budget included a provisional sum of £10,000 for fob operated gate locks, which we subsequently decided to drop. Therefore the revised budget is £137,000 versus a spend of £135,000.
The project has been funded as follows:
· Resident voluntary donations £47,000
· Precept increase 2014/15 £27,000
· Precept increase 2015/2016 £27,000
· Precept increase 2016/2017 £27,000
· Balance from garden reserve £ 7,000
· Total £135,000
A huge debt of gratitude is owed to James Tuckey, who has masterfully overseen the construction process, as well as to Nicola Heywood who has provided assistance throughout and has overseen the replanting of the Rosmead border. We also wish to repeat our thanks to all residents who have so generously contributed to this project.
FINANCE
The Garden levy (or precept) was £55,000 for the financial year to 31st of March 2015 as a result of our decision at the 2014 AGM to double the precept for 5 years to help pay for the Rosmead railings project. The accounts for the same period, prepared on a cash basis, show a surplus of £21,698, compared to last year’s surplus of £14,796. However, the comparison is unhelpful for the same reasons as last year. First, as you know we agreed to raise voluntary donations from residents towards the Rosmead railing project. We had a tremendous response and raised a total of £47,000 from a large number of residents. Second, by 31st March 2015 we had spent £43,000 on the Railings project. Third, the children’s fund had collected £600 by end of the financial year. Adjusting for these 3 abnormal items leaves a ‘normal course’ surplus of £5,028. Our normal income and expenditure during the year under review followed previous years with garden expenses taking the lion’s share of our income. We try to ensure that the Garden Party and Fireworks evening, taken together, break even and I am glad to report that we met this objective again in 2014 with a healthy surplus of circa £2,500. As in previous years we engaged the services of an accountant to help the Treasurer with the management of the accounts at a cost of £412. A copy of the accounts are available from the Treasurer, James Tuckey, at 95 Elgin Crescent.
For the current year to 31st March 2016 the precept was again raised to £55,000, by agreement at last year’s AGM. We anticipate that we will achieve a small surplus on ‘normal course’ income and expenditure, and on current estimates we are likely to have cash in the bank at the end of March 2016 of £3,300, at which point we will have paid for the whole of the railings project, but we will have almost exhausted our reserves. Cash flow from now until the receipt of the first 2016/17 precept will be tight and several members of your committee have agreed to provide a temporary loan, should this be necessary, to be repaid from the 2016/17 precept.
For many years your Committee have planned to hold, at any one time, a surplus of approximately one year’s precept in order to meet one off expenditures. Any surpluses arising are added to the reserves which are essential to enable general maintenance projects to be carried out. In order to rebuild our reserve and provide for some additional garden expenditure your Committee are proposing a final year of the £55,000 ‘exceptional precept’ for the upcoming financial year starting on 1st April 2016 and revert to a lower precept next year. This would be the 3rd and final year of the double precept, and I am happy to report that this exceptional precept will end two years earlier than originally envisaged, largely because of the generosity of so many residents. We propose that £37,500 of that amount is to be used for Garden expenditure and £17,500 will go towards rebuilding our reserves.
GARDEN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION
Email, mail drops and noticeboard notification will continue as per usual, but we would like to remind you there is a basic website where residents are able to find general information about our Garden, including the rules and notifications. The domain name is: www.rosmeadgarden.com Your feedback and contributions to the site would be welcome.
SOCIAL EVENTS
Last summer’s “Galaxy” party was crazy as always, helped by the fact that many residents spectacularly dressed up to the nines. The irrepressible Montgomery family are the driving force behind our summer parties and Valerie and Jeff deserve our gratitude. As usual the theme for this year’s party is still under wraps but will be revealed in due course. The date will be Saturday June 25th, please mark that in your calendar. We can assure you it will involve glamorous dressing up.
The Bonfire Night Firework Display is still in the post Pinter era, but rumour has it Stefan might be persuaded to come back one year. This year ‘Pains Fireworks Company’ was engaged to be in charge of the fireworks and generally well received by all. A few requests for more ‘spectacle’ have been received by the Committee and because the event generally is well attended we could up the budget from its current £2,400 to include some bigger ‘rockets’. So we propose to work with them again this year should Stefan be busy. We also need to ensure the Bonfire goes off better this year, it was too wet.
PLANTING, TREES AND GENERAL GARDEN USAGE
During this year we have focused on the Long Term Planting Plan, specifically for the Rosmead borders following the successful completion of the historic railings restoration project.
Firstly, as we discussed at our 2015 AGM, we invited all those who were interested to join our Planting Group to help us with this project. We circulated the draft plans for the borders along with all of Lucy Huntington's considerable work to date on the Long-Term Planting Plan, the garden map, and her very thorough report encompassing all the history we hold on the garden, and all the advisory reports we have in our archive. We enjoyed a Spring ‘walk about’ one early evening with Lucy in the garden and invited all those who were interested to join us. The planting group worked through all this information and gave us their feedback and suggestions and even their favourites. The group then met to discuss the draft plan and everyone’s feedback. In addition to this several interested residents had given their comments on the garden too. A big thank you to everyone for all their hard work and positive input. We then sent all the feedback to Lucy who carefully considered all of this and came up with the final planting plan for the Rosmead borders. The first stage of this has now been planted, during early December last year.
Throughout the year we also did our regular maintenance and tree works, and we would like to thank Paul our gardener and his team for all their hard work. We also focused on the individual borders (formerly known as ‘no man's lands’). Working together with our residents, we encouraged everyone to take a look at these areas. Sometimes it was just to suggest an increase in maintenance, and perhaps also to consider some replanting, working with us on this. And we have had great success: working in partnership with Lucy, she is now involved in helping with over 10 of these individual borders, all of which are at various stages of development or completion. We have formed some great working relationships with very helpful residents.
A copy of all of Lucy’s work to date can be found on rosmeadgarden.com and you may be interested to know that she has been appointed to do a long-term planting plan for the Blenheim/Elgin garden next door, where planting has already begun, as well as a specific project for Arundel/ Ladbroke.
We received many positive reactions to the Long Term Planting Plan, but we wanted to share one in particular, that of Thomas Pakenham, our resident tree expert and author of The Company of Trees: “My reactions to Lucy's proposals? I was thrilled. Of course I had one or two suggestions: especially more magnolias. The list of suitable magnolia species and cultivars is enormous, and they do particularly well in Ladbroke. But the most important thing about Lucy's plan is that it's a plan for development. For the first time for many years the committee will be in possession of a real long-term plan. It's easy to call in an expert and cut down a lot of decaying trees and shrubs and re-place them with what are hoped will be better replacements. To carry out a long-term plan is much more difficult. No one can forecast how the replacements will take to their new home. We have to rely on guesses - and then adapt the plan accordingly. Every year (or more frequently) the committee should assess how things are going. My guess is that our garden will turn out the most exciting - as well as the most practical - of all the 15 gardens in Ladbroke.”
Once again Open Garden Squares Weekend this summer was a great success. Over 650 visitors came to see our garden, and enjoy the cafe. We will open on Sunday June 19th from 12 to 5pm on June and entry will be through the Rosmead Gate.
Sadly dog mess continues to be a problem, both our gardener and fellow residents report. However, on a positive note, following the removal of the bins, there has been much less litter in the garden.
POST BONFIRE COMMUNAL GARDENING DAY
It’s a Garden tradition for Residents to contribute to the removal of autumn leaves each year the morning after the Bonfire party. On the day, only two people participated and we are asking you to come out in force this year at 10.30AM the day after the bonfire party. Many hands make light work and the time saved by our gardener can be spent on more specialist gardening duties. This year the November Bonfire Night falls on a Saturday (November 5th), so the communal gardening day will be on Sunday the 6th. Please bring a rake!
INFRASTUCTURE
This year’s infrastructure project, aside from the big railings initiative, has been to change the locks on the Ladbroke and Rosmead gates, Michael Staveley’s personal Swansong. Over the years many hundreds of keys have been issued and to create a ‘clean’ register, we have now introduced numbered keys. The person in charge of keys for existing and new residents is Stephen Fordham. Stephen will also be the first point of contact for new residents, to help provide background information on the garden rules and insights into how things are generally done. His email is: fordham@zadigam.com.
COMMITTEE
As at the beginning of January 2015 the Committee comprised of those mentioned below:
Michiel Bakker
James Tuckey
Juliet Wilkinson
Gabriella Mitchell
Stephen Fordham
Nicola Heywood
Valereehah Montgomerio
Michael Staveley
Gerard Cunningham
After 7 years as Chairman, Michiel Bakker will resign after the AGM, and after even more years on the Committee in charge of infrastructure, so will Michael Staveley. On behalf of the residents, the Committee wishes to express their gratitude to Michael and the outgoing Chairman, who has presided over a very productive 7 year period, which has brought us the ratification of the rules, a new name for the Garden, a long term planting plan and of course the restored railings. Neil Weeks is proposed and seconded to join the Committee. All other members are proposed for re-election. It is proposed the following three members will hold the role of officers: Juliet Wilkinson – Chairman; James Tuckey – Treasurer and Gabriella Mitchell – Secretary. Any alternative nominations should be notified to the Chairman by 5PM on Friday January 15th.
DATE FOR AGM
The date for this AGM was determined during last year’s AGM. We will propose Monday January 16th 2017 as the date for next year’s AGM.
Other important dates for 2015:
London Open Garden Squares Day: Sunday June 19th
Summer Party: Saturday June 25th
Bonfire Party: Saturday November 5th
Communal Gardening Day: Sunday November 6th
We hope to see you shortly at this year’s AGM on Monday the 18th of January at 105 Elgin Crescent at 7.30pm.
Yours sincerely,
The Committee.